pro rege cover march 2007 - dordt college€¦ · charles c. adams frost like ashes ... cormac...

FeaturesGalileo, Biotechnology, and Epistemological Humility: Moving stewardship beyond the development-conservation debateCharles C. Adams

Frost like ashes: Review essay ofCormac McCarthy’s The RoadJames C. Schaap

Evangelicals, Education, and ExileHarold Dean Trulear

Calvin the Transformationist and the Kingship of ChristTimothy P. Palmer

Book ReviewsDavid W. Bebbington:The Dominance of Evangelicalism: The Age of Spurgeon and Moody(A History of Evangelicalism: People, Movements and Ideas in the English-Speaking World, vol. III)Reviewed by Keith C. Sewell

Tim Morris and Don Petcher:Science & Grace: God’s Reign in the Natural SciencesReviewed by Arnold E. Sikkema

Anthony Milton:The British Delegation to the Synod of DortReviewed by Keith C. Sewell

Pro RegeVolume XXXV, Number 3Volume XXXV, Number 3

Pro RegeVolume XXXV, Number 3

Pro RegeMarch 2007March 2007

A quarterly faculty publication ofDordt College, Sioux Center, Iowa

Pro Rege is a quarterly publication of the faculty of Dordt College. As its name indicates (a Latin phrase meaning “for the King”), the purpose of this journal is to proclaim Christ’s kingship over the sphere of education and scholarship. By exploring topics relevant to Reformed Christian education, it seeks to inform the Christian community regarding Dordt’s continuing response to its educational task.

Editorial Board Mary Dengler, Editor Sherri B. Lantinga, Review Editor Sally Jongsma, Proofs Editor Pro Rege is made available free of charge as a service to the Christian community. If you would like your name added to the mailing list or know of someone whose name should be added, write to:

Editor, Pro Rege Dordt College Sioux Center, Iowa 51250

or E-mail: [email protected]

The index for Pro Rege, now in its thirty–fifth year of publication, can be accessed via the Internet: http://www.dordt.edu/publications/pro_rege/ The opinions expressed in this publication do not necessarily represent an official position of Dordt College.

ISSN 0276-4830Copyright, March 2007Pro Rege, Dordt College

Pro Rege

Pro Rege—March 2007 1

ABSTRACTModern technology—biotechnology in par-

ticular—confronts the Christian community with a plethora of complex issues and questions for which there are no simple answers. Some of those issues—stem cell research, for example—are relatively specifi c and immediate. Others are more hypothetical: genetic therapy for lengthening life-span is one example. One particular issue that is both theoretical and immediate is the question of

stewardship. What does the Lord require of his image-bearing creatures with respect to their rela-tionship to the rest of creation? Some Christians have argued that we are called by God to respect and conserve the created order and that we do so by seeking ecological understanding and promot-ing actions that minimize human disruption of and/or intervention in those ecological patterns that we discover. Other Christians, hearing God’s call to “be fruitful and increase in number, fi ll the earth and subdue it,” understand stewardship more in terms of development. The former group raise many concerns with respect to biotechnology. The latter group are eager to promote biotechnological advancement. Far too often, however, representa-tives of both groups are infl uenced by naturalism as much as by careful biblical thinking.

Using a relatively novel interdisciplinary ap-proach, this paper will advocate for the embrace of epistemological humility as a way of avoiding the pitfalls of naturalistic thinking and for remaining faithful to traditional Christian understandings of the nature of creation and of what it means to be human. Starting with basic biblical tenets that have been accepted by Christians for centuries, it will seek to articulate a relationship between the human and non-human creation that encourages careful bio-technological advance within the context of creation care, and that transcends the polarization between unbridled development and stagnating conservation. The approach will incorporate insights from the his-tory of science (e.g., Galileo, Descartes) and the phi-

Galileo, Biotechnology, and Epistemological Humility:Moving stewardship beyond thedevelopment-conservation debate

by Charles C. Adams

Dr. Charles C. Adams is Professor of Engineering and Dean of the Natural Sciences at Dordt College.

Editor’s Note: This paper was presented, in modified form, at the sixty-first annual meeting of the American Scientific Affiliation, at Calvin College, July 28-31, 2006.

2 Pro Rege—March 2007

losophy of technology (e.g., Egbert Schuurman) with basic Christian doctrine (e.g., the Apostle’s Creed) to imply a posture of epistemological humility suitable as a common foundation from which to approach specifi c issues and problems in biotechnology.

INTRODUCTION

Because of this the land mourns, and all who live in it waste away; the beasts of the fi eld and the birds of the air and the fi sh of the sea are dying. (Hosea 4:3, NIV )NIV )NIV

You will go out in joy and be led forth in peace; the mountains and hills will burst into song before you, and all the trees of the fi eld will clap their hands. (Isaiah 55:10-12, NIV )NIV )NIV

The words of Hosea and Isaiah bring critical un-derstanding to what we read in the Psalms (e.g., Psalm 8, 19, 24) and in the book of Genesis (Genesis 1 and 2): the earth, all of creation, belongs to God. He loves it and cares for it; but his image-bearing crea-ture has sinned and brought shame and brokenness upon that creation. Nonetheless, by God’s grace the whole of creation will be redeemed. Humankind and mountains, the beasts and the trees of the fi eld alike, will share in the eternal reconciliation bought by the suffering of the Redeemer, the one revealed in the New Testament as Jesus, the Word of God in human form, the Creator-Sustainer-Redeemer of all things (Colossians 1:15-20).

In these last days, before the return of Jesus, we humans experience both the brokenness de-scribed by Hosea and the shalom foreseen by Isaiah. Moreover, we are called to serve as God’s hands in his world: the instruments through which he brings healing and reconciliation to his creation. At the beginning of the twenty-fi rst century, we fi nd our-selves having learned how to transform creation in ways unimagined by the Old Testament prophets. In particular, the most recent advances in biotech-nology have enabled humankind to wield unimag-ined power, power that can bring both great heal-ing and great devastation upon creation, including humankind itself.

Getting in Bed with FrankensteinAgriculture defi nes northwest Iowa. Sioux

Center, located on the plains of northwest Iowa, is surrounded by fi elds of corn and soybeans, punc-tuated by hog and cattle feedlots. However, agri-culture is changing. The corn has been genetically modifi ed to resist herbicides, and the reproduction of cattle is gaining assistance from artifi cial in-semination and cloning. Even so, a newcomer has been added to the northwest Iowa landscape: the biotechnology company. By 2002, there were no less than seven biotechnology companies operating in northwest Iowa, and increasingly, Dordt College graduates—with majors in chemistry, biology, and agriculture—were fi lling their professional ranks.

With this newcomer, it seemed natural and ap-propriate to some at Dordt College that a program in biotechnology be established. What was envi-sioned was not a full-blown research and teaching program that would compete with the likes of Iowa State University but rather a modest undergraduate program, one that would more completely prepare students for service in the fi eld of biotechnology, both in terms of technical competence and—more importantly—Christian perspective.

However, what seemed natural and appropriate to some, struck horror in the minds of others. Dordt College has had a program in environmental stud-ies for a decade or more, originating in its Biology Department and eventually becoming a major in its own right. The quarter-century-old Agriculture Program has always held a reputation for promot-ing sustainability and creation care. As a result, a number of Dordt life scientists (agronomists, biolo-gists, environmental scientists, etc.) raised serious questions about the appropriateness of starting a biotechnology program. To them, it was inconsis-tent for an institution devoted to “serviceable in-sight,” “care for creation,” and “obedient steward-ship” to promote a fi eld of inquiry/endeavor that they perceived to be hubris-motivated, unstewardly, dangerous in the extreme, “playing God” (whatever that might mean), and contemptuous of creation. Joining the life scientists were a number of philoso-phers who believed that before any such program is started, those starting it must demonstrate its expertise with respect to such philosophy-of- bio-technology issues as safety and risk, bioethics, and transgenic manipulation.

Under that directive, a “biotechnology working


group” was formed to investigate the outstanding issues and to propose a program that would assuage the critics and give form to the vision of those who believed that Dordt had a high calling to start a bio-technology program. Before the formal proposal to start the program was adopted in May of 2006, the group had produced a fi fty-four page position paper

titled Getting in Bed with Frankenstein: Why a Christian College Should Develop Programs in Biotechnolog y,1 pro-viding a biblically based rationale for the program and addressing some of the most contentious is-sues. Throughout the process, however, it became clear that the central issue of debate was the tension between a view of stewardship as conserving, car-ing for, and serving the non-human creation, and a view of stewardship as unfolding, developing, and serving the non-human creation.

Stewardship as Conserving or Stewardship as Development: An “Either/Or”?

The position paper prepared by the Biotech-nology Working Group laid the groundwork for and briefl y addressed such issues as sustainable agriculture, safety and risk, distributive justice, ge-netically modifi ed crops and the developing world,

transgenic manipulation and the boundaries of “kinds,” the sanctity of life and of human life, clon-ing, and the nature of human nature. Ultimately, it was found that each of these issues, as well as the question of development versus conservation, is grounded in just a few more fundamental issues. Those turn out to be (1) the defi nition of biotech-nology, (2) humanity’s fall into sin and the scope of the consequent curse, and (3) the relation of hu-manity to the non-human creation.

DEFINING BIOTECHNOLOGY The fi rst question is whether a narrow or broad

defi nition of biotechnology is appropriate. To some, the word “biotechnology” is synonymous with “ge-netic engineering” and is irrevocably tied to trans-genic manipulation and cloning. Such a defi nition is unhelpful for a number of reasons. First, it begs the question by defi ning a human activity in terms of particular forms of that activity—forms that are at the heart of the controversy. Second, and more important, it fails to allow for a careful analysis of the context of meaning of the activity we call bio-technology. Thereby it opens itself up to assump-tions it may well want to reject.

The Working Group found that a more gen-eral defi nition of biotechnology allowed for a care-ful analysis of the various issues. In Stephen V. Monsma’s book Responsible Technolog y, a comprehen-sive defi nition of technology is offered and carefully explained. That defi nition views technology as one kind of human response to the “creation mandate,” the call given to humankind, in Genesis 1:28 and 2:15, to “be fruitful and increase in number; fi ll the earth and subdue it….Rule over the fi sh of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living crea-ture that moves on the ground.” According to the defi nition given in Responsible Technolog y, technol-ogy involves as its subject “the natural creation.”2

The authors understand this term to mean physi-cal and living things. Thus, it is reasonable to see “technology” as being capable of subdivision into two categories: the technology of physical subjects and the technology of living subjects. This was the approach taken by the Dordt Working Group: Biotechnology, most simply, is the technology of living subjects. Refi ning the general defi nition of technology given in Responsible Technolog y, the fol-

Throughout the process, however, it became clear that the central issue of debate was the tension between a view of stewardship as conserving, caring for, and serving the non-human creation, and a view of stewardship as unfolding, developing, and serving the non-human creation.


lowing was agreed upon:

Biotechnology is a distinct, cultural activity in which human beings exercise freedom and are held accountable as they respond to God by trans-forming the biotic creation, with the aid of tools and procedures, for basic research and for practi-cal ends and purposes.

THE FALL AND THE CURSE While no one at Dordt denied the radical fall

into sin and the brokenness that has been its result, the extent of that brokenness became an issue. If, for example, the non-human creation is unaffected by the fall except in terms of its direct (causal) rela-tionships with humankind, then the order and re-lationships we fi nd within the non-human creation might (and I stress the word “might”) be given a kind of benchmark status in our biotechnological benchmark status in our biotechnological benchmark statuswork. If, on the other hand, the curse is more sys-temic and creation does indeed “groan” of its own accord—even without causal interaction with sinful humanity—then the order and relationships we ob-serve in the non-human creation cannot with con-fi dence be used as a template for biotechnological work. However, this issue is beyond the scope of this paper and, to at least some extent, overlaps the third issue: the relationship of humanity to the non-human creation.

HUMANKIND’S RELATION TOTHE NON-HUMAN CREATION

What is the relationship of humankind to the non-human creation? Are humans simply one more species of living things that, at this point in the history of the universe, is effectuating signifi -cant change on planet Earth but that will one day go the way of the dinosaur? Or are humans a unique species unlike any other kind of living creature, a species that has the capacity to radically alter its own environment and possibly its own nature in unpredictable directions? Are humans a develop-ing form of divinity? Or are humans the servants of a deity that created the universe and made humans his representative to serve, care for, and enable that universe to fl ourish? And particularly in these days of advancing technological capability, how does our understanding of the relationship of humans to the

non-human creation inform our understanding of technology?

Thomas Hobbes’ famous description of the “natural condition of mankind” as “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short” 3 only slightly exaggerates the experience of most people in pre-modern times. The phrase “over-against” conveys concisely the re-lationship of humans to the non-human creation. Finding or producing suffi cient food and protection against the weather and predators dominated that relationship.

Civilization enabled humankind to refl ect on that “over-against” relationship. However, while one might fi nd some appreciation for the non-hu-man creation in the writings of Homer and of the Old Testament,4 it was Hellenistic thought that 4 it was Hellenistic thought that 4

most defi nitely shaped attitudes regarding the re-lation of humankind and non-humankind. At the center of that thought was Platonic idealism, with its own particular form of “over-against.” The non-human creation was viewed as imperfect and tem-poral matter, lacking substance and permanence, a mere shadow (to use Plato’s analogy) of the ideal and eternal forms that could only be approached by thought. The truly human part of humankind was human part of humankind was humanthat thinking apparatus or mind. The human body mind. The human body mindwas separate from that mind, merely part of the in-substantial and impermanent non-human creation.

As an unhappy result, much of Christian thought has been infl uenced by Hellenistic idealism. Where the New Testament spoke of “spirit” or “soul,” the Church understood the immaterial, rational, and eternal essence of humankind. Where the New Testament spoke of “body,” the Church understood corrupt, sinful, and impermanent matter. The es-cape of the Christian’s soul from the body and into “heaven” paralleled the escape of the Hellenistic “rational soul” from the prison of the body into the world of forms. Clearly the relationship of human-kind to the non-human creation remained one of “over against” in much of Christian thought.

It was a synthesis of Greek and Christian thought that dominated Western culture from the early Middle Ages to the time of the Renaissance and the Enlightenment: biblical theology and Aristotelian cosmology infl uenced each other and provided the foundation for the Western medieval worldview. On that foundation the Copernican Revolution in


science arose, as did the Protestant Reformation. These and other Renaissance and Enlightenment developments altered the way humankind viewed the non-human creation. The rise of empiricism in science indicates a very different way of looking at the world around us, one that, one might say, gives it more respect than was given during the Middle Ages, when an understanding of the universe was based on what might be derived, in strictly ratio-nal manner, from incidental experience and age-old cosmological beliefs. However, even if the non-hu-man creation was respected as a source of valuable data, it was still viewed as “over-against” human thought and understanding. The dualism of soul and body remained pervasive.

Consequently, the age of exploration and the Industrial Revolution built upon an altered founda-tion: one still grounded in the synthesis of Greek thought and Christian theology but now with the benefi t of pilings driven by the Copernican Revolution in science. The sciences of mechanics and thermodynamics made possible the develop-ment of new machines and structures, such as the steam engine and the railroad. However, that devel-opment came only after considerable human effort. The non-human creation continued to resist hu-mankind’s attempt to know her and to bring forth her artifactual children. Thus, both the science and the technology of the period we know as the Industrial Revolution reinforced the “over-against” view of the relationship between the human and the non-human creation.

The seeds of change in this view were planted by Darwin, but they did not begin to sprout until the late twentieth century. The idea that human-kind was nothing but another expression of the immutable and inviolable laws of nature—or even more specifi cally, the laws of mechanics—was ex-pressed by a few, most notably the French mathe-matician and astronomer Pierre Laplace. However, mechanical reductionism remained too much a vio-lation of common sense to gain signifi cant popular-ity. Darwin’s work replaced mechanical reduction-ism with biotic reductionism, a view that appealed a bit more to common sense. After all, there are more commonalities between humans and chim-panzees than there are between humans and stars or between humans and water molecules. The late

nineteenth century and most of the twentieth cen-tury, therefore, witnessed a change in attitude re-garding the relationship of the human to the non-human creation. Increasingly, humans were seen as a uniquely evolved part of the natural creation. Then the 1960s occurred, and the notion of humans as simply a natural part of the natural creation was dealt an enigmatic blow. It became clear to more than just professional ecologists that humans were causing all sorts of problems in the non-human environment. The science of ecology arose from obscurity to address one of the chief issues of the

day: the environmental crisis. As a result of all these thought-changes, understanding of the relationship between the human and the non-human creation was obscured, with the “over-against” view gain-ing new strength from the palpably obvious tension between strivings for human development and the concern for a “clean,” or even “pristine,” environ-ment.

THE NON-ANSWER THE NON-ANSWER THE OF NATURALISMIn some respects, naturalism may be seen as re-

sulting from the melding of Greek and Christian thought. Naturalism is the view, or system of

It was a synthesis of Greek and Christian thought that dominated Western culture from the early Middle Ages to the time of the Renaissance and the Enlightenment: biblical theology and Aristotelian cosmology influenced each other and provided the foundation for the Western medieval worldview.


of human nature.”5 Ray Kurzweil 6 and Rodney Brooks,7 on the other hand, emphasize the “na-ture pole,” explaining everything in terms of the laws of physical causality, and thus predict the day when there will be no difference between humans and what we today call robots. Kurzweil, in fact, predicts human immortality being achieved by downloading our minds into the computer storage devices that will be an integral part of our new and replaceable robotic “bodies.”8

A more sophisticated form of naturalism, and one that historically has attracted a number of Christian thinkers, is the approach of “natural law.” John Locke, Hugo Grotius, and Thomas Aquinas are names associated with the natural law tradition in history. Recent work by Wesley Wildman and by Rolf Bouma, a doctoral student of Wildman’s, uses the approach of natural law to develop norms for biotechnological activity. 9 While Wildman and Bouma’s approach gives some useful guidelines by pointing to the perceived structure of creation and rightfully insisting that we respect that structure, it tends to identify normativity with structure and ei-ther restricts itself to biotic and physical structures or seeks to reduce other evidences of structure (e.g., parents caring for children) to biotic structure (e.g., evolutionary adaptation).

LESSONS FROM THEHISTORY OF SCIENCE10

One can gain much insight into the conserva-tion-development debate, as well as into the natural-istic perspective, by studying the history of science. To a physical scientist, there are two key episodes in the history of Western science that stand out as “revolutionary:” the Copernican Revolution in the sixteenth century and the Einsteinian Revolution in the early twentieth century.

Prior to the Copernican Revolution—that is, pri-or to the discoveries represented by Copernicus and Kepler in Astronomy and Galileo and Newton in mechanics—Western science was dominated by the well-established theories of Aristotle. Astronomy was geocentric; mechanics was understood in terms of the doctrine of “natural place,” and what was to become chemistry was guided by the four-element theory of matter. These were the established under-standings of the physical creation, basic components

thought, holding that all phenomena (things and events) can be explained in terms of “natural” causes and laws, where “natural” is understood as that which is exclusively biotic and physical. In many circles, the melding of Greek and Christian thought led to a kind of deism, wherein the Creator is understood to have brought into being all things and the laws by which all things function, and then simply to have allowed them to function in a seem-ingly autonomous fashion, with that lawfulness in-herent in the things themselves. The Darwinian variety of naturalism asserts that those laws are fundamentally biotic and physical. The Laplacian variety asserts that they are only physical, biotic laws being reducible to physical law.

Of course, one need not be a deist to embrace naturalism; an atheist can embrace naturalism just as well. A theist can also adopt a posture of method-ological naturalism; that is, one can do scientifi c and technological work “as if” all things and events can be explained in terms of natural causes and laws.

A problem with naturalism, however, is incoher-ence. Naturalism must begin with a belief in the capacity of free human thought to understand and shape the world around itself. However, when the naturalism gets to the point of explaining all things and events in terms of physical causality, it effec-tively eliminates the possibility for truly free human free human freethought. Thought itself becomes explainable—one might even say determined—by the laws of physics. The only escape for the naturalist is to posit a radi-cally dualistic ontology: one where the world of na-ture and the world of ture and the world of ture free human thought and the world of free human thought and the world of are completely free human thought are completely free human thoughtseparate from each other. That escape is illusory, however, because the basic problem of how humans are to interact with the non-human creation betrays the inseparability of nature and nature and nature free human thought. free human thought. free human thought

Nonetheless, a form of naturalism can be at-tractive to a Christian mind that sees the world in dualistic terms: spirit and matter. It fails, however, to address the tension between conservation and development. A naturalist position can be used, and has been used, to defend either side of the argu-ment. Francis Fukuyama, for example, emphasizes the pole of “free human thought” in his book Our Posthuman Future; here he raises deep concern about the ways humans are altering the natural environ-ment. He shows particular concern for the “nature


in the Western worldview for close to two-thousand years. However, in a relatively short time during the Sixteenth Century, that would all change. Today we tend to look back on the theories of Aristotle as in-tuitive but primitive or quaint, and we neglect to appreciate how long those theories stood the test of time.

By the end of the nineteenth century, it seemed that the Newtonian worldview had matured. The revolution had been accomplished, and what was left was to collect the data and tidy up the details. The Industrial Revolution and developments in the thermal-fl uid sciences—all based on Newtonian physics—seemed to confi rm that we had arrived at a place of scientifi c understanding of the universe. However, over the course of less than twenty years, at the beginning of the Twentieth Century the work of Planck, Einstein, Bohr, and Heisenberg turned Newtonian mechanics on its head. Today we appre-

ciate Newtonian science as an adequate model and empirical explanation of the phenomena, so long as one does not do anything extreme or look at any-thing too closely. Still, it is a model that fails to truly explain the lawfulness in the physical creation.

What, then, is the cosmological model that dom-inates science today? What view of the world has privileged—or as Thomas Kuhn describes it, “par-adigmatic”—status? Surely it is one that is a revo-lutionary refi nement of the Newtonian worldview, with relativity and quantum mechanics providing

that refi nement. However, the revolutionary work of Planck, Bohr, Heisenberg, Pauli, Schrödinger, De Broglie, Born, and others—and especially the arguments between Bohr and Einstein—have made it clear that the cosmological picture that we have today is as much an epistemological picture as it is an ontological one. Whereas the Newtonian world-view was a naïve realist worldview, the post-mod-ern cosmological picture, infl uenced by positivism and linguistic analysis, exists as a tension between realism and idealism. We are much more ready today, than we were in Galileo or Newton’s day, to admit that our cosmological world picture is as much a product of our epistemological apparatus as it is a picture of what is “really and truly out there.” Einstein resisted that admission, wanting to believe in a much closer relationship among the knower, knowing, and the known subject. Neils Bohr, who was, interestingly, known as a very humble per-son, embraced the uncertainty and ambiguity that seemed required by the epistemology of quantum mechanics. His theory of complimentarity, as well as Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle, arises from a kind of epistemological humility.

Galileo’s EpistemologyBut epistemological humility has not been

a dominant characteristic of Western scientifi c thought. Consider Galileo, for example. While popular understanding limits his confl ict with the Church in Rome to have been primarily with the relative position of the earth and the sun—geocen-tric versus heliocentric astronomical models—it can be argued that the confl ict was actually much deeper, more on the level of biblical hermeneutics and epistemology. Galileo’s views regarding Holy Scripture and the relationship of theology to natural science are formulated most carefully in his “Letter to the Grand Duchess Christina.” 11 Therein one will fi nd his use of the phrase, “the intention of the Holy Ghost is to teach us how one goes to heaven, not how heaven goes.”12 Galileo’s epistemological opinions, however, are nowhere more apparent than in his Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems, Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems, Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systemsthe book that caused him the greatest amount of trouble with the Church. Consider the following paragraph on the absolute nature of those particu-lar modes of human understanding associated with

We are much more ready today, than we were in Galileo or Newton’s day, to admit that our cosmological world picture is as much a product of our epistemological apparatus as it is a picture of what is “really and truly out there.”


mathematics and natural science:

Human understanding can be taken in two modes, the intensive or the extensive. Extensively, that is, with regard to the multitude of intelligibles, which are infi nite, the human understanding is as nothing even if it understands a thousand proposi-tions; for a thousand in relation to infi nity is zero. But taking man’s understanding intensively, in so far as this term denotes understanding some proposition perfectly, I say that the human intel-lect does understand some of them perfectly and thus in these it has as much absolute certainty as Nature itself has. Of such are the mathematical sciences alone; that is, geometry and arithmetic, in which the Divine intellect indeed knows infi nitely more propositions, since it knows all. But with re-gard to those few which the human intellect does understand, I be lieve that its knowledge equals the Divine in objective certainty, for here it succeeds in understanding necessity, beyond which there can be no greater sureness.13

This speech is placed in the mouth of Salviati, Galileo’s representative in the Dialogue. As if antici-pating the coming fury, Galileo has Simplicio, a par-ticipant in the Dialogue, suggest that Salviati’s speech Dialogue, suggest that Salviati’s speech Dialoguestrikes him “as very bold and daring.” Salviati re-plies that such is not the case, that his discussion of absolute certainty is no more bold than saying “God cannot undo what is done,” a proposition that had some general acceptance at that time.14 Then, 14 Then, 14

to clarify his argu ment, Galileo has Salviati say the following:

So in order to explain myself better, I say that as to the truth of the knowledge which is given by mathematical proofs, this is the same that Divine wisdom recognizes; but I shall concede to you in-deed that the way in which God knows the infi nite propositions of which we know some few is ex-ceedingly more excellent than ours. Our method proceeds with reasoning by steps from one con-clusion to another, while His is one of simple intui-tion.15

Galileo’s caveat notwithstanding, he is asserting that human knowledge can be absolutely certain—just as it is for God—and that certain kinds of hu-man knowledge, e.g., 2 + 2 = 4, are the same for the

human creature as they are for the Creator. Galileo is recognized today as a revolutionary experimental physicist but not even as a second-rate philosopher. Nonetheless, his cosmology arises from a philo-sophical worldview that would dominate Western thought and, it may be argued, remains with us to-day in refi ned but essentially unaltered form.

Descartes’ Epistemological DualismQuoting him as writing, “I wished to give my-

self entirely to the search after truth,” Frederick Copleston describes Descartes’ fundamental aim as the attainment of philosophical truth by the use of reason.16 Likewise, Peter Schouls asserts that for “Descartes, the greatest need which the philoso-pher can fi ll is to do away with insecurity, with lack of certainty.”17

It may be argued that whereas Galileo did battle with the scholasticism of the late medieval Church, Descartes did battle with skepticism. 18 Descartes’ famous method of doubt has one chief end, the at-tainment of certain knowledge. He believes that there is only one kind of knowledge and that it is certain and evident. Unique to Descartes is the notion that there is only one kind of science based on that one kind of knowledge and that there can be only one scientifi c method. 19 This one kind of knowledge is attained by the “light of rea son,” and it stands over against uncertainty, falsehood, and prae-judicia: Descartes’ technical term for those opinions and hypothetical statements that have yet to with-stand methodological doubt.

Thus for Descartes, knowledge is certain and is grounded in reason. The nature of reason is ex-pressed by intuition and deduction. Quoting from Descartes’ Rules for the Direction of the Mind, Schouls Rules for the Direction of the Mind, Schouls Rules for the Direction of the Mindwrites,

To say that the understanding can acquire knowl-edge in a way other than through intuition and de-duction would be false, for “nothing can be added to the pure light of reason which does not in some way obscure it.” Thus it is these “two operations of our understanding, intuition and deduction, on which alone...we must rely in the acquisition of our knowl edge.” Intuition and deduction express the very nature of reason.20

Descartes’ epistemological dualism (e.g., certain


knowledge vs. praejudicia) is consistent with his on-praejudicia) is consistent with his on-praejudiciatological dualism (res cogitans vs. res cogitans vs. res cogitans res extensa). His “one res extensa). His “one res extensakind of science” based on his “one kind of knowl-edge” meant for him that all the natural sciences could be reduced to physics and that thus the whole material world could be treated as a mechanical sys-tem. This is manifest, for example, in his interpre-tation of ani mals as machines and in his rejection of the need to consider any but effi cient causes in physics. In other words, fi nal causality is a theo-logical concern and has no place in physics.21 Thus, Descartes’ ontological dualism reinforces his epis-temological dualism. Further, although Descartes may not have done so himself, those who followed him would begin to classify theological knowledge in one category, with respect to certainty, and scien-tifi c knowledge in another category.

In summary, there is an interesting relationship between Galileo and Newton, on the one hand, and between Galileo and Descartes, on the other: where Newton polished and codifi ed Galileo’s mechanics, one might say that Descartes polished and codifi ed his epistemology.

Learning from HistoryWhat, then, might we learn from this brief ex-

ploration of the history of science? It may well be helpful to remind ourselves of the following: (1) the modern scientifi c worldview has been around for less than fi ve hundred years, in comparison to the two-thousand-year reign of the Aristotelian world-view, and it has experienced signifi cant change in the last hundred years; (2) the absolutization of hu-man knowledge and its equation—at least in some forms—with divine knowledge by Galileo and the codifi cation of that epistemological absolutism by Descartes, ought to raise some questions about the epistemological assumptions we make today.

A BIBLICAL-THEISTICSTARTING POINT22

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. (Genesis 1:1, NIV)

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that

has been made. (John 1:1-3, NIV)

While these verses provide a good place to start discussing a Christian view of the conservation-de-velopment debate, the doctrine that God created all things is affi rmed and stressed throughout Scripture. throughout Scripture. throughoutGiven that stress, one may state the central idea in a slightly different form as “the radical distinction between Creator and creation,” or, expressed nega-tively, “Nothing God made is God.” 23 Outside of Scripture, the doctrine is confessed by Christian churches everywhere when they recite the Apostle’s Creed: “I believe in God the Father almighty, maker of heaven and earth.” On the basis of this doctrine one may deduce the non-self-suffi ciency and the referential character of creation.

Th e Non-self-suffi ciency andReferential Character of Creation24

Creation, or “nature,” or however else we may refer to “the known universe and all that it con-tains,” is not self-suffi cient. It was created by God and is sustained by him. Its existence is wholly de-pendent on its Creator. Moreover, having no exis-tence “in itself,” its only meaning and purpose can be, directly or indirectly, to serve its Creator. Thus, everything in creation refers back to its Creator, ei-ther in accordance with his will or in some distort-ed and disobedient manner. Only God is eternal, without beginning, and wholly self-suffi cient.

The sin of idolatry occurs whenever humankind

Thus, everything in creation refers back to its Creator, either in accordance with his will or in some distorted and disobedient manner. Only God is eternal, without beginning, and wholly self-sufficient.


views creation, or some part thereof, as it ought to view God. In modern expressions of naturalism, for example, the material world, reduced to atomic and sub-atomic particles, is considered to be “all that is.” Matter and energy are believed to be eternal (the First Law of Thermodynamics as taught to junior high school students: “matter and energy are neither created nor destroyed but only changed from one form to another”). Another example of idolatry occurs when humankind deifi es some part of cre-ation, claiming it to be “sacred” or “holy,” relative to the rest of creation. This deifying of creation is the idolatry of ancient pagan or animist cultures. It can also be the idolatry of modern cultures that cir-cumscribe certain parts of creation, claiming them to be “off limits” to human interaction, including inquiry.

Th e Goodness, Diversity,and Unity of Creation

God created all things “good.” Whether we read the creation account in Genesis, the divine po-etry of the Psalms, Proverbs and Job, or the words of the prophets, we are confronted with the unmis-takable message that God loves and delights in his whole creation: lions and dandelions, the birds of the air and the fi sh of the sea, humans created in his image, mountains, and stars. His expressed love for and delight in the creation entail the command that his image-bearing creatures, humankind, are to love, care for, and delight in that creation as well.

The creation is diverse. There are innumerable individual creatures that have existed, presently ex-ist, and will exist before Christ returns. Moreover, there are mind-boggling numbers of “kinds” of creatures. The command given to Adam to name the living creatures25 suggests both the ordered diversity within creation and humankind’s task in recognizing, respecting, and bringing to verbal ex-pression that diversity.

Notwithstanding this great diversity, there exists a fundamental unity to creation. All creatures owe their origin, their continued sustenance, and their fi nal redemption to the Word of God. 26 All share a common non-self-suffi ciency and fi nitude.

The goodness of creation means that evil is al-ways a distortion of what is good, never a creature27

(or substance) in itself. The diversity of creation

stands over against attempts to reduce creation to one or two substances, e.g., the matter and energy of the modern naturalist, Descartes’ thinking sub-stance and material substance, or even those oc-casions when Christians divide the world dualisti-cally into spiritual and physical realms. The unity in creation assures us that nothing that exists does so neutrally or autonomously, apart from the Word of God calling it into being for service. That unity also leads to the next critical point: the unity that human creatures have with the rest of creation.

Th e Creatureliness of Being HumanGod created humankind in his image, as ex-

plained in Genesis 1 and Psalm 8. But this image-bearing creature is nonetheless a part of creation, called into being for service. As image-bearers of the Creator, humans are given responsibility and (un-like non-human creatures) are thus free to respond either obediently or disobediently to the Creator. Human actions are therefore no less natural than the actions of plants and animals, stars or atoms. The difference is that human actions are performed in responsibility and, therefore, can be judged to be either in service or in disservice to the Creator and the rest of creation. Human actions should no more be characterized as “interventions” or “intrusions” into creation than should the actions of squirrels. The “natural” course of human actions (“natural” being defi ned as “in accordance with God’s will”) is to assist the rest of creation in fl ourishing, in be-ing what the Creator calls it to be. The “unnatu-ral” course of human actions (“unnatural” being defi ned as “in disobedience to God’s will”) brings brokenness and distortion to creation.

Being creaturely also means that humans are fi nite. We recognize that fi nitude in many ways. Our physical strength is fi nite. Our vision is fi nite. Each day of our lives contains a fi nite amount of time, which itself is part of the created order. In this post-fall world, the length of our lives is fi -nite. Considering together the radical distinction between God, on the one hand, and creation and the fi nitude of humanity, on the other, we are able to conclude, in a relatively straightforward way, that our thinking and reasoning ability is fi nite and crea-turely as well. Reason is something that God cre-ated in order to enable his image-bearing creature


to respond to him freely; thus, it is in this matter of reason that, from a biblical perspective, we must take reason that, from a biblical perspective, we must take reasonissue with Galileo. To equate human knowing with God’s knowing is to elevate a part of creation to the position of God—it is to create an idol. Reason is not God; it is part of creation. It is fi nite and creaturely. When we talk of “God knowing,” we do so analogically. When God “reasons” with us,28

he does so through his created means, by stooping

to the level of his creature. Science, whether math-ematics, quantum mechanics, molecular biology, or theology, is always fi nite and creaturely, character-ized by our nature as beings created in the image of God.

Sadly, there is one more important character-istic of creatureliness which must be recognized. Genesis 3 tells the story of humankind’s fall into sin and the consequent curse upon the whole of creation that followed that fall. Thus, creatureliness in our post-fall world implies sinfulness and brokenness. Surely that is the case for God’s image-bearing crea-tures. However, it is also the case—in a different way, of course—with the non-human creation. The “thorns and thistles” of Genesis 3:18 and the “bond-age to decay” of Romans 8:21 may be metaphors, but they are metaphors that point unambiguously to a creation that suffers under the curse, brought about by humanity’s sin. Sin and the curse affl ict the whole of creation much as original sin affl icts all humankind: it is systemic, pervasive to the very core of creation’s being.29 Thus science and technology must work with a creation that is both orderly and broken. On the one hand, there is much that can be learned by studying creation.30 On the other hand,

we must be careful not to assume that those parts of creation not directly affected by humans—as it were, untouched by human hands—are somehow pristine, in an ideal state that requires no healing or warrants no development.

Th e Relationship Between the Humanand the Non-human Creation

Given this biblical-theistic starting point, can we begin to articulate an answer to the question of the relationship between the human and non-hu-man creation? I believe we can if we take into con-sideration one more important biblical doctrine—a doctrine sometimes referred to as the “creation mandate.” In Genesis 1:28, we read the following regarding the fi rst humans:

God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruit-ful and increase in number; fi ll the earth and sub-due it. Rule over the fi sh of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves on the ground.”

This command is re-stated in Genesis 2:15 as follows:

The LORD God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it.

This task given to humanity—to develop and preserve creation—is directly related to our being created in the image of God. This is stated succinct-ly in Psalm 8:4-8 (although to understand the word “ruler,” we need to consult other parts of Scripture such as the Genesis accounts of creation and those dealing with God’s covenant with creation):

What is man that you are mindful of him, the son of man that you care for him? You made him a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned him with glory and honor. You made him ruler over the works of your hands; you put everything under his feet: all fl ocks and herds, and the beasts of the fi eld, the birds of the air, and the fi sh of the sea, all that swim the paths of the seas.31

Humankind, thus, has a unique place in creation. However, it is too easy to misinterpret that unique-ness to mean “wholly otherness.” One such misin-terpretation is to devalue the non-human creation to the extent that it exists only for the purposes of

Sin and the curse afflict the whole of creation much as original sin afflicts all humankind: it is systemic, pervasive to the very core of creation’s being.


humankind. Stress is then placed on development to the exclusion of preservation, and humankind supposes itself free to use (or abuse) the non-human creation in whatever manner it fancies. Sadly, this has been the tendency of the Church, under the in-fl uence of a dualistic mentality that values only “the spiritual” and devalues “the material” as worth-less. The other misinterpretation of humankind’s uniqueness as “wholly other” is to view humanity as creation’s intruder, who is capable of doing very little except pillaging creation. In this view, all non-human phenomena are considered “natural” while human actions affecting creation are considered “artifi cial” (the implication being that artifi cial is “unnatural”). The Scriptures, however, counte-nance no such misinterpretations. In the biblical narrative and the biblical worldview, humanity is an integral part of creation. There exists a necessary re-lationship between the human and the non-human creation, such that neither can be what it is called by God to be without the other. Obviously human-kind is dependent on the non-human creation for its very existence. However, the non-human cre-ation depends on humanity as well. It cannot fully fl ourish without the cultivation to which humanity is called by God. This mutual dependence is made wonderfully clear in a passage from the book of Ezekiel, where the Lord commands the prophet to speak to the mountains and hills:

Therefore prophesy concerning the land of Israel and say to the mountains and hills, to the ravines and valleys: “This is what the Sovereign LORD says: I speak in my jealous wrath be-cause you have suffered the scorn of the nations. Therefore this is what the Sovereign LORD says: I swear with uplifted hand that the nations around you will also suffer scorn. But you, O mountains of Israel, will produce branches and fruit for my people Israel, for they will soon come home. I am concerned for you and will look on you with favor; you will be plowed and sown, and I will multiply the number of peo-ple upon you, even the whole house of Israel. The towns will be inhabited and the ruins rebuilt. I will increase the number of men and animals upon you, and they will be fruitful and become numer-ous. I will settle people on you as in the past and will make you prosper more than before. Then

you will know that I am the LORD. I will cause people, my people Israel, to walk upon you. They will possess you, and you will be their inheritance; you will never again deprive them of their chil-dren.” 32

The message here is straightforward: the moun-tains and hills prosper when they serve as the in-heritance of God’s people. Likewise, God’s people can be fruitful only in mutual dependence with those mountains and hills. Thus the relationship between the human and non-human creation is one of interdependence. While the non-human creation provides God’s image-bearers with food, clothing, shelter, and the very materials out of which their bodies are made, God’s image-bearers serve the non-human creation by enabling it to fl ourish.

EPISTEMOLOGICAL HUMILITY

You asked, “Who is this that obscures my counsel without knowledge?” Surely I spoke of things I did not understand, things too wonderful for me to know. (Job 42:3, NIV )NIV )NIV

Job learned epistemological humility the hard way. From the ash heap of his wrecked life, he came to understand what the prophet Isaiah knew when he wrote,

“My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways may ways,” declares the LORD. “As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.” (Isaiah 55:8-9, NIV )NIV )NIV

By “epistemological humility,” I want to suggest a posture of appropriate servanthood and creature-liness with respect to our relationship with God and the non-human creation, particularly in terms of how we know the latter. To know—in the full-est sense of that word—is a peculiarly human and, hence, a distinctly creaturely activity. As mentioned earlier, to speak of God “knowing” is to speak ana-logically and legitimately as image-bearing creatures of God. Human knowing, even rational knowing, is never absolute. Thus certainty never has the ab-solute character that Galileo ascribed to mathemat-ics or that Descartes ascribed to deduction.

Knowledge is multi-dimensional. For example,


come to call the laws of physics? Might it not be be-cause we have absolutized both our understanding of physical law and human understanding itself?

From an attitude of epistemological humility we will certainly reject the hubris of technicism. Ray Kurzweil’s notions of immortality based on increasing technological development are rooted in the contradictory notions that, on the one hand, human understanding is unlimited and that, on the other hand, humans are nothing more than

evolving centers of matter, energy, and informa-tion. Epistemological humility will not curtail our imagining of future technological developments, but it will certainly persuade us of the foolishness of technological triumphalism. Science fi ction can play a healthy role in the technological imagination, as long as it remains science “fi ction.”

We will also reject bio-romanticism: the notion that what we understand as the non-human creation is somehow perfect and that it is we humans who are the sole cause of all brokenness in the world. Interestingly this notion rests upon the naturalistic assumptions that all causality is physical causality and that human knowledge of the non-human cre-ation is valid in an absolute sense. It also rests upon the assumption that there is something about human beings that makes them “un-natural.” If one probes those assumptions a bit, one comes to the conclu-sion that for William Wordsworth 33 or for ardent

if a teacher drops a chunk of iron sulfi de into a small beaker of hydrochloric acid in the midst of class of high school sophomores, they will break out in gig-gles because they “know” that distinctively biotic odor. They haven’t had chemistry yet, so they don’t “know” hydrogen sulfi de in the same way that the upperclassmen who have been through chemistry lab know hydrogen sulfi de. Rather, they know it “sensitively.” Although there are surely elements of reason involved in their knowledge, those sopho-mores know hydrogen sulfi de gas primarily by means of their sense of smell.

There are other modes of knowing beside the rational and the sensitive. Perhaps the one we tend to overlook most easily is faith knowledge. When we recite the Apostle’s Creed, we begin by saying, “I believe.” The knowledge content of the Apostle’s Creed certainly has a rational side, but it is, fi rst and foremost, faith knowledge. What we too often fail to see is that faith knowledge is also fundamental to our work in science. In order for us to proceed in science, we must trust that the scientifi c method is valid, that there is indeed a dependable lawfulness behind the regularities we observe in nature, and that the relationship between our thinking abilities and those regularities outside ourselves provide us faithfully, even if only provisionally, with insight into the behavior we observe.

This is perhaps a good place to summarize a major thesis of this paper. Given that we are crea-tures and not the Creator, and on the evidence pro-vided by the history of science—particularly when we see the historic roles played by the Aristotelian, Newtonian, modern worldviews in the develop-ment of scientifi c thought—we must conclude that scientifi c knowledge will always be fi nite and tenta-tive, never absolute. Thus, an attitude of epistemo-logical humility ought to characterize our work in science and technology.

From an attitude of epistemological humility, we will want to question the basic assumptions of naturalism. Why should causality be exclusively physical causality? Certainly this is the way we have experienced nature during the last four hundred or so years. However, it is not an attitude common to humanity across the world and throughout recorded history. Furthermore, why should the explanation of all our experience be reducible to what we have

While the non-human creation provides God’s image-bearers with food, clothing, shelter, and the very materials out of which their bodies are made, God’s image-bearers serve the non-human creation by enabling it to flourish.


followers of PETA, 34 bio-romantic inclinations are 34 bio-romantic inclinations are 34

rooted in a commitment to the autonomy of human thought, not unlike that expressed by Galileo and Descartes. Thus epistemological humility calls into question the naturalism of physical reductionists as well as the naturalism of bio-romanticists.

Epistemological humility, however, will embrace the notion of servanthood. By rejecting the kind of absolute certainty that Galileo and Descartes claimed for human knowledge, we come to recog-nize our own creatureliness and our dependence on the One who created us. We are thereby enabled to take up our role as servants of our Creator, of each other, and of the non-human creation.

EGBERT SCHUURMAN’S PHILOSOPHY OF TECHNOLOGY

Returning to the questions of the relationship of the human to the non-human creation and the apparent tension between development and conser-vation, we fi nd that an examination of the philoso-phy of technology developed by Egbert Schuurman can be most helpful. In particular, Schuurman uses the concept of “meaning disclosure” to get at the essence of obedient technological develop-ment and to distinguish it from technicism, un-derstood as technological development for its own sake. Schuurman’s recent book, Faith and Hope in Technolog y, published in 2003, is most helpful be-cause it addresses in particular the concerns raised by biotechnology. A more complete discussion of the concept of “meaning disclosure,” however, is found in his earlier work, Technolog y and the Futurepublished in 1980. 35

Schuurman argues that creation is more than just the physical and the biotic. Human functioning gives clear evidence of dimensions beyond the phys-ical and biotic, dimensions such as the historical, so-cial, lingual, as well as the dimension of faith, just to name a few. However, Schuurman argues also for the participation of the non-human creation in these post-biotic dimensions. 36 For example, just as humans cannot be fully human (cannot even exist!) without the physical and biotic sides to their integral selves, the non-human creation requires the ser-vice of human beings for the full expression of its multifaceted wholeness. This service occurs when humans interact with the non-human creation, en-

abling the non-human creation to fl ourish in ways otherwise impossible.

Recall the prophecy of Ezekiel 36. The land fl ourishes when God brings his people back to it, when the ruins are rebuilt, and people and animals are once more thriving “in the land.” The unity and interdependency evidenced in that prophetic vision are what guide Schuurman’s view of technology. When humans engage in technology obediently, ac-cording to God’s normative Word, then creation is opened up, its post-biotic dimensions are disclosed, and it glorifi es its Creator in new ways. Of course, when humans engage in technology disobediently, in opposition to God’s normative Word, then the non-human creation is distorted, and its capacity for glorifying its Creator is diminished.

A second key element in Schuurman’s philoso-phy of technology is his careful distinction between science and technology. Both involve meaning dis-closure. However, science is seeking to understand creation by analysis, that is, by means of logical ab-straction. In physics, for example, we separate the irreducibly physical characteristics of a given phe-nomenon from its other characteristics in order to better understand that abstracted physical aspect. Technology, on the other hand, discloses meaning in a different way. Instead of seeking to understand what is already there, technology seeks to bring into being what exists only in potential. The method of technology is likewise different from the method of science. Rather than dealing with abstractions from our experience of reality, technology deals with reality in its wholeness. A signifi cant part of Schuurman’s critique of technicism is that it focuses on technological problems as if they were scientifi c problems, examining only aspects of a situation, de-tached from the context of the whole.

A third key element in Schuurman’s philosophy of technology is his careful distinction between physical and biotic meaning and his warning, with regard to biotechnology, that we heed this distinc-tion.37 Modern technology, up until the present time, has dealt overwhelmingly with physical phe-nomena. Only recently has biotechnology signifi -cantly altered that emphasis. However, physical technology must concern itself with the laws for physical subjects. One of the most important of those laws is what we have come to call the Second


Law of Thermo-dynamics. It states that for closed systems and in all physical processes, the tendency is always to move in the direction of uniformity and randomness. In physical processes involving en-ergy transformation, for example, the Second Law states that some energy will always be dissipated as low-level thermal energy, the random motion of the mass particles of a system. This characteristic of physical things is a primary factor in all physical technology. Any and all design that seeks to trans-form the physical must cope with the Second Law of Thermodynamics.

Biotic meaning, however, is different. Despite having a physical dimension and therefore also be-ing subject to the Second Law, living things are sub-ject to biotic laws that transcend and are irreduc-ible to physical law. In part, this biotic lawfulness may be stated as “autonomous procreation and the

preservation of the whole despite the continuous change of its parts.”38 Let us use the term “biotic fl ourishing” to connote these characteristics as well as some others that help us distinguish living things from physical things. Biotic fl ourishing leads liv-ing things in the direction of higher complexity and increased differentiation. The Lord makes use of this characteristic of living things in his mustard seed metaphor: “Though it is the smallest of all your seeds, yet when it grows, it is the largest of garden plants and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and perch in its branches.” 39 Of course, the language of the creation mandate contains, in part, the same language used to direct all living things: “Be fruitful and increase in number.” 40

The key point here is not only that the Second Law of Thermodynamics and biotic fl ourishing distinguish, respectively, physical things and living things but also that these two general laws direct their respective creatures oppositely. All physical things are subject to the Second Law of Thermodynamics. All living things—which are also physical—are sub-ject to the law for biotic fl ourishing as well as the Second Law of Thermodynamics. Schuurman puts it this way:

The difference between the technology of the inorganic and the technology of the organic be-comes clear when we note the different laws which apply to the two domains. In inorganic nature ev-erything tends in the direction of leveling. …In the world of living things, however, we witness a process of increasing differentiation.41

If in our minds we reduce living things to physical things, if we believe that biological activity is merely an expression of physical law, we will approach bio-technology with the same tools, procedures, and at-titudes with which we approach physical technology. Doing so may have dire consequences.

Consider that since the Industrial Revolution—the period of history that has given expression to “modern technology”—technological initiatives have had chiefl y to contend with physical law such as the Second Law of Thermodynamics. Thus, the tools, procedures, and attitudes of modern technol-ogy are those associated with physical technology, developed in the course of dealing with the tenden-cy of things to move in the direction of random-

When humans engage in technology obediently, according to God’s normative Word, then creation is opened up, its post-biotic dimensions are disclosed, and it glorifies its Creator in new ways. Of course, when humans engage in technology disobediently, in opposition to God’s normative Word, then the non-human creation is distorted, and its capacity for glorifying its Creator is diminished.


ness, uniformity, and leveling—the tendencies of processes to slow down and stop. On only relatively rare occasions has modern technology had to deal with fl ourishing as a problem. Those problems have largely had to do with the transplantation of species of living things from their native habitat to one that enabled reproduction to occur in an uncontrolled and profl igate manner (e.g., rabbits in Australia; gypsy moths, Africanized bees, and carp in the United States 42). In physical technology, problems of profl igacy are never truly physical but always so-cial in nature, 43 for example, the proliferation of automobiles and the resulting social and environ-mental degradation.

The posture of modern technology has thus been established by the technology of the physical. If we take a reductionistic approach to living things, seeing them as nothing but complicated expressions of physical law, we will have no inclination to alter that posture as we engage in biotechnology. The result will be our unpreparedness to deal with prob-lems such as biotic profl igacy, problems associated with the response of living things to distinctively biotic laws.

Edward Tenner, in his book Why Things Bite Back: Technolog y and the Revenge of Unintended Consequences, de-Technolog y and the Revenge of Unintended Consequences, de-Technolog y and the Revenge of Unintended Consequencesscribes the kind of technological problems that can occur when the whole is mistaken for the sum of its parts, as when a living thing is mistaken for a series of complex chemical reactions. He calls these technological problems “revenge effects,” in order to distinguish them from “side effects” and trade-offs—two kinds of technological problems that are more clearly understood.44 Revenge effects are not 44 Revenge effects are not 44

confi ned to biotechnology. Revenge effects in in-formation technology are legion. One has only to consider how the “blessing” of e-mail has induced the “curse” of spam. However, revenge effects in biotechnology are both precipitated and aggravated by those characteristics of living things that are not reducible to physical systems, e.g., fl ourishing.

STEWARDSHIP: BOTH BIOTECHNOLOGY AND CREATION CARE

A Story of Buff alos and Chimney PotsEarly on a snowy Sunday morning some time

ago, I sat in the enclosed porch on the back of my

house and watched the sky slowly brighten. The softly falling snow obscured the sunrise, but the view to the east and south was nonetheless beauti-ful. I had enclosed the porch the previous summer; and with fl oor-to-ceiling windows enveloping more than half the room, a gas-fi red stove for heat, car-pet on the fl oor, and a comfortable reading chair in which to sit, the new room provides a way of ex-periencing the outdoors while maintaining indoor comfort. Since I live on a ridge on the Iowa prairie, on a clear day I am able to see many miles toward the distance horizon, despite the presence of the surrounding houses that constitute the suburban development of which my house is one part. For example, the water tower in the next town, twelve miles to the southeast, is often striking in its round, orange visibility.

On this particular morning, however, the ob-scuring quality of the lightly falling snow focused my attention on what once was the surrounding prairie. I tried imagining what the scene was like a hundred years ago, with the rolling hills dominated by prairie grass—and perhaps a herd of buffalo nearby. It was then that I was tempted to wish away the other houses, streets, lampposts, and other signs of civilization so that I could glimpse the natural, unadulterated prairie. Notice I said “tempted.” I couldn’t really bring myself to wish away those ar-tifacts of civilization because I believe that houses, streets, and lampposts are just as “natural” as the prairie grass. They are simply a different kind of na-ture—cultural nature, if you will. As an engineer, I am someone who believes fi rmly that the Lord has called us to unfold and develop the creation, bring-ing forth creatures (like houses, streets, and lamp-posts) that exist only in potential until humankind’s response to the creation mandate brings them into being.

Still, on this particular morning I was torn. I had developed a sense of empathy for my Dordt col-leagues in the life sciences for whom, it sometimes seems, the only truly beautiful landscape is one that shows no infl uence of technology. I yearned to see the pristine prairie grass bending slightly under the weight of lightly falling snow, the playful scurrying of prairie dogs, and the slow-moving buffalo as the snow creates a cloak of white on their woolly and dark- brown backs.


Then, however, I realized that I had seen all these things before. In fact, the imaginative longing that stirred within me that snowy Sunday morning could never have occurred had I not already been acquainted with those denizens of God’s good cre-ation. I remembered the fi lm The Vanishing Prairie, The Vanishing Prairie, The Vanishing Prairiewhich was produced by Walt Disney back when I was a child in the 1950s. I also remembered more recent real life experiences of these prairie creatures in Blue Mounds, Minnesota, and in Custer National Park in South Dakota. It was these memories, co-existing with the scene before me, that helped create that yearning for a more pristine scene, a yearning that seemed somehow out of synch with my appre-ciation for technology.

After a few more moments of musing, however, it occurred to me that I have other memories with the power to create other imaginative longings for very different vistas. In particular, I recalled travel-ing with my wife two years ago to England. One of the cities that we visited was York, a place whose medieval personality is preserved in the layout of the streets, the character if the buildings, and especially the ancient wall that surrounds the city. Many of the older cities in England were walled cities, built in early medieval times with the need for protection from less-civilized neighbors. The wall in York is the best preserved of all these cities, and an ambi-tious visitor can walk atop the wall, almost com-pletely around the city, in just a few hours. One van-tage point on the wall offers an exquisitely beautiful view of the York Minster Cathedral of St. Peter, one of England’s largest and oldest churches, completed in the year 1470, after two hundred and fi fty years of construction. The sight I remember best, however, occurred when we stood atop the wall and looked outward from the city center toward the surrounding suburbs. Of course, this being England, the “sub-urbs” of York were developed during the nineteenth century and so represent the Victorian era, the time in which Charles Dickens lived and about which he wrote in his many novels and stories. What struck me most about that view were the ubiquitous earth-enware chimney pots that punctuated the horizon, telling of a time when the hundreds of aged houses were heated by fi replaces that burned wood or coal. Thinking about that view from the wall in York, and contrasting it with the view from my enclosed

porch, I realized that the vision of Victorian society suggested by the one, and the vision of prairie grass and buffalo suggested by the other, are both beauti-ful, God-glorifying, and very much natural in their own way. The tension between biotic nature, on the one hand, and cultural nature, on the other, is a false tension and was here resolved for me by my recalling the aesthetic experiences of viewing the once-upon-a-time, prairie-grass-dominated horizon from my enclosed porch, and the Victorian suburbs of Northern England from the wall in York. Truly, as the writer of Ecclesiastes has told us, God “has made everything beautiful in its time.”45made everything beautiful in its time.”45made everything beautiful in its time.”

ConclusionThe tension between biotechnology and cre-

ation care, between development and conservation, is a false one. We are called by our Creator to be stewards of his good creation, caring for it both by bringing healing and helping it fl ourish. By adopt-ing a posture of epistemological humility, we will be prone neither to abuse the non-human creation nor to set it on a pedestal out of reach. Rather, we will see ourselves as one part of creation—the part that has responsibility for the wellbeing of the whole. We will see our knowledge as fi nite and affected by sin, and we will see our artifacts—including biotechno-logical artifacts—as the products of that fi nite and fallible knowledge. When produced with care, they will have as much natural place as the fl owers of the fi elds and the birds of the air. For they will be evidence of the unity in nature: “cultural nature” arising from “biotic nature.”

Endnotes

1. Charles C. Adams, Getting in Bed with Frankenstein: Why a Christian College Should Develop Progress in Biotechnolog y, a position paper for the Biotechnology Working Group, Natural Sciences Division, Dordt College, Sioux Center, IA, 2005.

2. Stephen V. Monsma, Ed, Responsible Technolog y (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Wiliam B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1986), 19.

3. See Thomas Hobbes, Chapter XIII “Of the Natural Condition of Mankind as Concerning Their Felicity and Misery,” in Leviathan (Cambridge: Cambridge Leviathan (Cambridge: Cambridge LeviathanUniversity Press, 1991), chapter 9.


4. See S. C. Florman, The Existential Pleasures of Engineering2nd edition (New York: St. Martin’s Griffen, 1994), particularly 104-114.

5. Frances Fukuyama, Our Post-Human future: Consequences of the Biotechnical Revolution (New York: Ferrar, Strauss, of the Biotechnical Revolution (New York: Ferrar, Strauss, of the Biotechnical Revolutionand Giroux, 2002), 129.

6. Ray Kurzweil, The Age of Spiritual Machines: When Computers Exceed Human Intelligence (New York: Viking, Computers Exceed Human Intelligence (New York: Viking, Computers Exceed Human Intelligence1999).

7. Rodney Brooks, Flesh and Machines: How Robots Will Change Us (New York: Pantheon Books, 2002).Change Us (New York: Pantheon Books, 2002).Change Us

8. Kurzweil, 280.

9. See Wesley J. Wildman, “A Modifi ed Natural Law Approach to bioethics,” in Jensine Andresen, ed. Cloning (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004), and Rolf T. Bouma, “Does Not Nature Itself Teach?”: Biotechnolog y and Natural Law in a Theolog y of Nature. Boston University Graduate School of Arts and Sciences doctoral dissertation (Ann Arbor, Mich.: ProQuest Information and Learning, 2002).

10. Some parts of this section are taken from Charles C. Adams, An Analysis and Solution to the Two-Cultures Problem in Undergraduate Engineering Education (Ph.D. Problem in Undergraduate Engineering Education (Ph.D. Problem in Undergraduate Engineering EducationThesis), Graduate College, The University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA.

11. Stillman Drake, translator and editor, Discoveries and Opinions of Galileo (New York: Doubleday Anchor Opinions of Galileo (New York: Doubleday Anchor Opinions of GalileoBooks, 1957).

12. Drake, 1957, 186.

13. Stillman Drake, translator and editor, Galileo Galilei: Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems (Berkeley: Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems (Berkeley: Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World SystemsUniversity of California Press, 1967), 103.

14. Descartes also expresses this same view when he writes, “every time I turn towards things which I think I conceive very clearly, I am so persuaded of their truth that I spontaneously declare: let him deceive me who may, but he shall never be able to cause me to be nothing, so long as I think that I am something, or to cause it one day to be true that I have never been, it now being true that I am, or that two and three make more or less than fi ve, or such like things which I see clearly cannot be other than as I conceive them,” in Rene’ Descartes, Discourse on Method and the Meditations(London: Penguin Books, 1968), 114-115.

15. Drake, 1967, 103.

16. Frederick Copleston, A History of Philosophy, Vol. IV: Modern Philosophy (New York: Doubleday, 1963; Image Book Edition, 1994), 66.

17. Peter Schouls, “On the Nature and Limits of Rationality,” in Hart, H., Van der Hoeven, J., and

Wolterstorff, N., Rationality in the Calvinian Tradition(Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1983), 176.

18. Copleston, 69.

19. Copleston, 70.

20. Schouls, 33.

21. Copleston, 138.

22. Portions of this section are taken from Charles C. Adams, Getting in Bed with Frankenstein, 2003.

23. This is a point Allen Verhey makes over and over again in his Reading the Bible in the Strange World of Medicine (Grand Rapids, Mich.: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2003).

24. See Brian Walsh and J. Richard Middleton, The Transforming Vision: Shaping Christian Worldview(Downers Grove, Il: InterVarsity Press, 1984), chapter 3; Albert M. Wolters, Creation Regained: Biblical Basics for a Reformational Worldview (Grand Rapids, Mich.: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1985), chapter 2; Roy A. Clouser, The Myth of Religious Neutrality (Notre Dame, In: University of Notre Dame Press, 1991), 43-48.

25. Genesis 2:19-20 (New International Version25. Genesis 2:19-20 (New International Version25. Genesis 2:19-20 ( ).New International Version).New International Version

26. Proverbs 8, John 1, Colossians 1, Hebrews 1 (NIV26. Proverbs 8, John 1, Colossians 1, Hebrews 1 (NIV26. Proverbs 8, John 1, Colossians 1, Hebrews 1 ( ).NIV ).NIV

27. Even Satan is an example of this—a fallen angel.

28. Isaiah 1:18 (NIV28. Isaiah 1:18 (NIV28. Isaiah 1:18 ( ). NIV ). NIV

29. The most obvious evidence of this is human suffering brought about by disease, genetic malformations, and “natural” occurrences, such as tornados, volcanic eruptions, and earthquakes. But those same kinds of sufferings are found to occur among animals as well. Beyond these, it is the task of the scientist to attempt to distinguish the effects of the curse from the good structure in creation.

30. See, for example, Isaiah 28: 23-29 (NIV30. See, for example, Isaiah 28: 23-29 (NIV30. See, for example, Isaiah 28: 23-29 ( ).NIV ).NIV

31. NIV.

32. Ezekiel 36: 6-12 (NIV32. Ezekiel 36: 6-12 (NIV32. Ezekiel 36: 6-12 ( ).NIV ).NIV

33. See, for example, Wordsworth’s poem “The Tables Turned,” in W. H. Marshall, The Major English Romantic Poets (New York: Washington Square Press, Inc., 1963), Poets (New York: Washington Square Press, Inc., 1963), Poets129.

34. People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals.

35. Schuurman, 1980, 361.

36. Schuurman, 1980, 329-330.

37. Schuurman, 2003, 106.

38. See Herman Dooyeweerd, A New Critique of Theoretical 38. See Herman Dooyeweerd, A New Critique of Theoretical 38. See Herman Dooyeweerd, AThought Vol.1 (Philadelphia: The Reformed Publishing Thought Vol.1 (Philadelphia: The Reformed Publishing ThoughtCo., 1969), 107.


39. Matthew 15:32 (NIV39. Matthew 15:32 (NIV39. Matthew 15:32 ( ).NIV ).NIV

40. Genesis 1:22 and 1:28 (NIV40. Genesis 1:22 and 1:28 (NIV40. Genesis 1:22 and 1:28 ( )NIV )NIV

41. Schuurman, 2003, 106.

42. Edward Tenner, Why Things Bite Back: Technolog y and the Revenge of Unintended Consequences (New York: Alfred A. Revenge of Unintended Consequences (New York: Alfred A. Revenge of Unintended ConsequencesKnopof, 1996), 121-135.

43. And because the social is built upon the biotic, the nature of the biotic contributes to the problem.

44. Tenner, 5.

45. Ecclesiastes 3:11 (NIV).

Bibliography

Adams, Charles C. An Analysis and Solution to the Two-Cultures Problem in Undergraduate Engineering Education. Ph.D. Thesis. Graduate College, The University of Iowa, 1996.

Adams, Charles C. Getting in Bed With Frankenstein: Why A Christian College Should Develop Programs in Biotechnolog y. Position Paper of the Biotechnology Working Group, Natural Science Division, Dordt College, 2005. .

Bouma, Rolf T. “Does Not Nature Itself Teach?”: Biotechnolog y and Natural Law in a Theolog y of Nature. Doctoral Dissertation. Boston University Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. Ann Arbor, MI: ProQuest Information and Learning, 2002. .

Brooks, Rodney. Flesh and Machines: How Robots Will Change Us. New York: Pantheon Books, 2002.

Clouser, R.A. The Myth of Religious Neutrality. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1991.

Copleston, Frederick, S.J., A History of Philosophy, Vol. IV: Modern Philosophy, New York: Doubleday, 1963; Image Book Edition, 1994.

Descartes, R. Discourse on Method and the Meditations. London: Penguin Books, 1998.

Dooyeweerd, Herman. A New Critique of Theoretical Thought. Philadelphia: The Presbyterian and Reformed Thought. Philadelphia: The Presbyterian and Reformed ThoughtPublishing Company, 1969.

Drake, Stillan, translator and editor. Discoveries and Opinions of Galileo. New York: Doubleday Anchor Books, 1957.

Drake, Stillman, translator and editor. Galileo Galilei: Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967.

Florman, S.C., 1994, The Existential Pleasures of Engineering. The Existential Pleasures of Engineering. The Existential Pleasures of EngineeringSecond edition. New York: St. Martin’s Griffen, 1994.

Fukuyama, Francis, 2002, Our Posthuman Future: Consequences of the Biotechnolog y Revolution. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2002.

Kurzweil, Ray. The Age of Spiritual Machines: When Computers Exceed Human Intelligence. New York: Viking, 1999. .

Marshall, W.H. The Major English Romantic Poets, New York: The Major English Romantic Poets, New York: The Major English Romantic PoetsWashington Square Press Inc., 1963.

Monsma, Stephen V., ed. Responsible Technolog y. Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1986.

New International Version (NIV). The Holy Bible. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Bible Publishers, 1985.

Schouls, P.A., “On the Nature and Limits of Rationality,” in Hart, H., Van der Hoeven, J., and Wolterstorff, N., Rationality in the Calvinian Tradition, Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1983.

Schuurman, Egbert. Technolog y and the Future: a Philosophical Challenge. Toronto, ON: Wedge Publishing Foundation, 1980.

Schuurman, Egbert. Faith and Hope in Technolog y. Toronto, ON: Clements Publishing, 2003.

Tenner, Edward. Why Things Bite Back: Technolog y and the Revenge of Unintended Consequences. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1996.

Verhey, Allen. Reading the Bible in the Strange World of Medicine. Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2003.

Walsh, Brian, and J. Richard Middleton. The Transforming Vision: Shaping Christian World View. Downers Grove, Vision: Shaping Christian World View. Downers Grove, Vision: Shaping Christian World ViewIL: InterVarsity Press, 1984.

Wildman, Wesley J. “A Modifi ed Natural Law Approach to Bioethics.” Cloning. Ed. Jensine Andresen. Cambridge Cloning. Ed. Jensine Andresen. Cambridge Cloningand New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004.

Wolters, Albert M. Creation Regained: Biblical Basics for a Reformational Worldview, Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Reformational Worldview, Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Reformational WorldviewEerdmans Publishing Co., , 1986.


“He spreads the snow like wool and scatters the frost like ashes.” Psalm 147:16.

I wouldn’t wish the apocalypse on anyone. I’ve never been particularly attracted to stories or nov-els or fi lms that pitch survivors into the living hell of post-nuclear-holocaust madness, or a blackened earth sprung out of orbit by some errant heavenly asteroid. Anxiety rises in me easily enough; I don’t need more than I have, especially when it swells up from a burned-out world I simply don’t want to imagine.

But I loved Cormac McCarthy’s new novel The Road, which is pure and unadulterated apocalypse, Road, which is pure and unadulterated apocalypse, Roadvividly—unrelentingly—evoked.

Something’s happened to our world—what, McCarthy doesn’t tell us. Maybe ten years before the story begins, everything went up in smoke, triggering mass starvation and death. Those few still walking spend their days and nights foraging for food and clothing, fuel and shelter, trying to stay alive in a nightmare. Many do the unimagi-nable simply to keep breathing.

Fire must have raged everywhere because no matter where the story brings us, the landscape is gray and wan; even snow seems ashen. Sullied rain falls throughout the novel, and the color green has vanished so vast a confl agration must have reigned. Nights are dark as pitch, but there is a day even though the sun is shrouded, and there are few shadows.

A man and his young son are pushing a shop-ping cart with what they have left, moving slowly south to the coast in search, it seems, of warmer weather. The man has a handgun, and, at the out-

by James C. Schaap

Dr. James Calvin Schaap is Professor of English at Dordt College and the author of 25 books of various genres. His stories and articles have been honored by the Associated Church Press, the Evangelical Press Association, and the Iowa Arts Council. He authored Dordt’s Jubilee play, Vision at Work and Play; a history of the Christian Reformed Church, Our Family Album; as well as devotion-als and the World War II biography of Diet Eman, Things We Couldn’t Say. His novel Touches the Sky was given an Award of Merit by Christianity Today in 2004, as was his Startling Joy, a collection of Christmas stories, in 2005. In 2006, he published three books—Speaking of Pastors, Crossing Over: Stories of Asian Refugee Christians, and In His Feathers: the Letters and Journals of Sharon Bomgaars. In addition he wrote the original script for the documentary The Reckoning, a film which won first place this year in the New York Film Festival. He has been teaching literature and writing at Dordt College for thirty-one years.

Frost like ashes:Review essay of Cormac McCarthy’s The Road


set, two bullets. We don’t know exactly why father and son are on the road, probably because noth-ing was left of the place where they’d been able to stay alive since whatever cataclysm that turned the world to cinder.

There are echoes of Job here. The mother is gone, having taken her own life for reasons which are clear and even forgivable. Hunger—starva-tion—has created monsters in human form. All along the way, the boy begs his father to distin-guish the two of them from the “bad guys” around them —his father promises never to eat a human being. Yet amid the wretchedness, we understand how tenuous that well-meant pledge is. Such is life down the agonizing emptiness of The Road.The Road.The Road

The novel is prophetic in a way that has noth-ing to do with politics. It is not a Jeremiad. Cormac McCarthy is not warning his readers of the decline of the West or some penultimate cultural clash. The scenario is nightmare, but there’s no agenda—political or environmental or cultural.

Because there is no agenda, the story takes on the trappings of a fable. Despite its bitter horrors and beastly characters, its desolate world and deso-lated environment, love triumphs. It’s not possible to say what I mean in those very words—love tri-umphs—because anything we might connect to that subject-and-verb seems empty and clichéd. What shines through the devastation of stark end-times horror is respect and trust; what triumphs in the ruins is unwavering human commitment.

The Road begs you to believe, to have faith that The Road begs you to believe, to have faith that The Roadeven in the darkest of our possibilities, there can be light. Transcendent faith is all there is and all there is left in the apocalypse.

Some fi nd that a strange note for a writer not generally known for optimism or even a modi-cum of hope. His contribution to American lit-erature is already secure with his Border Trilogy (The Crossing, Cities of the Plain, All the Pretty Horses ), novels recognizable for their dark view of human character and the human condition.

But here, amid McCarthy’s characteristically eccentric prose style, the unconditional love be-tween father and son is a testimony, strangely, to the faith that we are more, somehow, than the darkness both around and within.

This novel is not a joy to read—let’s be frank. But its fable-like character offers unmistakable hope which shines even more brightly in a world that has lost the sun.

Psalm 147 contains an odd line that seems drawn, ironically enough, from McCarthy’s short and brutal but not hopeless novel: “He spreads the snow like wool and scatters the frost like ashes.” I came upon that line a week or so after fi nishing The Road, and it brought me back to McCarthy’s The Road, and it brought me back to McCarthy’s The Roadhaunting novel. I have no idea what the psalmist was imagining when he wrote that God scatters the frost like ashes, but somewhere therein is the suggestion of confl agration and sadness.

But the theme of the song the psalmist is sing-ing in 147 is praise, praise, and more praise, his heart so full of faith and joy that he may well sing better than he thinks.

And that’s okay. Sometimes we all do—and must. And I believe him, just as I do Cormac McCarthy. Faith still sustains the heart of our every moment—yesterday, today, and tomorrow, whatever that tomorrow might be.


In a 1971 sermon, the late E. Theodore Jones poses an interesting question to the biblical text of Matthew’s gospel, Chapter 14, verses 22-33. There one fi nds the familiar story of Peter walking on the water. Jones, one time dean of the School of Theology at Virginia Union University, does not focus on the miraculous event of the fi sherman’s sea-top stroll. He does not give primary attention to Peter’s sinking when Peter’s eyes did not leave Jesus, nor does Jones give much heed to Jesus’ res-cue of the “rock” during the episode. Rather, Jones

makes a different entry to the text, posing the fol-lowing question: “What made Peter get out of the boat in the fi rst place?”

The text really does not specify Peter’s mood or mind on the subject, but Jones speculates on the fi sherman’s frame of mind; his speculation, based on the various times Peter appears in the gospels, reveals a rather distinct personality. This Peter who is quick to answer Jesus’ question concern-ing Jesus’ identity, who speaks for the Father, who then lets Satan have control of his voice; this Peter who boasts of his fi delity to Jesus, who then fol-lows this boast with an assault on a temple guard, and who then gives a terse, vulgar-laced denial of the Christ, is the same Peter who asks to come to Jesus on the water. Impetuous and impervious, brash and rash, Peter, opines Jones, probably acted not on faith but on visibility—wanting to be seen. Peter the attention getter, Peter the man front and center, is the one Jones proffers. Jones goes on to recognize the grace that Jesus extended to Peter in granting his request and miraculously bringing Peer toward him. Jones contrasts this response with what would have been his own, albeit fl awed, human response to Peter’s impetuosity: “I would have yelled, ‘Peter, get back in the boat.’”

Jones presses the notion that there are times when impetuosity gets us into trouble that only the grace of God can address. Then Jones turns the tide on his suburban church audience and declares, “Somebody needs to tell America to get back on the boat.”

Jones was particularly concerned about America’s role in international affairs: he criti-cized certain policies, notably the war in Viet Nam. However, for him the greater problem was a lack of

Evangelicals, Education, and Exile

by Harold Dean Trulear

Dr. Harold Dean Trulear is Associate Professor of Applied Theology at the Howard University School of Divinity, in Washington, D. C., and Non-Resident Fellow of the Center for Public Justice, in Annapolis, Maryland.

Editor’s Note: Dr. Trulear delivered this paper at the Dordt College Convocation, January 13, 2005.


national humility concerning our country’s place, not just in the world of politics but also in eco-nomics, culture, and even religion. Jones espied the need for a culture of humility as a prophetic alternative to a spirit of cultural unilateralism, the kind that Myles Monroe, the Bahamian evangelist, critiqued when he observed that “America is the only country that plays a World Series by itself.”

Such a call for national humility frames my ad-dress today. Indeed, for the Evangelical Church,

especially those of us who affi rm the Sovereignty of God with Reformed vigor, a culture of humility would seem to be the order of the day. Humanity, no matter how well organized in our institutional life, how well informed in our educational life, how far advanced in our technology, how far “su-perior” economically, must resist the temptation to take credit for the grace of God. Resisting this temptation is a very diffi cult thing to do, however, especially when we keep winning, whether it is World Series or a war, the Olympics or the space race, the standard of living or the fi eld of entertain-ment. It seems as though the United States has developed an outlook on life that echoes the ‘70s bumper sticker: “When you’re as good as I am, it’s hard to be humble.” We even have the richest poor people in the world, with a standard of living that, while not good, certainly trumps that of the poor

in many other countries. For the Christian, this attitude becomes par-

ticularly problematic in light of the salvation narra-tive of the Scriptures. God’s people always (or are supposed to always) rely on Him as their strength and protection. God’s people are supposed to un-derstand that all of their possessions are gifts from God. God clothes us, feeds us, and cares for us. God is Providence and will share His glory with no one. Now, however, with the successful rise of Evangelical involvement in the political sphere in the late 1970s and early 1980s, the church basks in the glow of some fairly bright political lights in some fairly high institutional places. While Christian commitment to citizenship demands our participation in the public sphere, such participa-tion should always be done with humility and a prophetic critical distance that does not equate the agenda of God with any partisan platform.

In his important work God’s Name in Vain, Yale University Law Professor Stephen Carter chides the church for uncritical partisan allegiances that make the church indistinguishable from the views of its adopted party. Carter criticizes White Evangelicals for their wholesale adoption of the Republican Party; such an adoption removes them from the likelihood of any prophetic witness, since a prophetic witness requires a critical distance. Carter also criticizes Black Protestants for whom the Democratic Party represents God’s agenda. In both cases, argues Carter, the Church loses sight of the larger witness of the Kingdom of God and its sense of otherness. 1 In the Spirit of C.S. Lewis, whose 1941 essay “Meditations on the Third Commandment” contains his objection to starting a Christian party in British politics, Carter proffers the argument that no political party can fully em-body the ethics and ethos of the Kingdom.2 Also, the idea of a “Christian Party" would be of neces-sity exclusive, especially to those who have been saved by grace but who may hold a different posi-tion on a particular issue.

Such exclusivity characterized much of the verbiage on both sides of the 2004 Presidential election. Not only did White Evangelicals sup-port Bush, but many also wondered aloud if one could be a Christian and vote for Kerry. Others came right to the point of exclusion: one could not

While Christian commitment to citizenship demands our participation in the public sphere, such participation should always be done with humility and a prophetic critical distance that does not equate the agenda of God with any partisan platform.


be a good Christian and vote for the Senator from Massachusetts. Such charges did not emanate solely from Evangelicals, Midwestern or other-wise. Many African-American Christians, angered over the policies of the Bush administration, ques-tioned how anyone could call himself or herself a Christian and vote for Bush. African-American angst was further intensifi ed by the virtual ab-sence of talk about race and poverty in the cam-paign, something one would have to retreat to the Presidential election of 1944 to repeat. To argue that God answered the prayers of those who voted for George W. Bush is to also assert that He didn’t hear the prayers of those who voted for Kerry. This response is not humility. We did not know what God would do with or through the Bush ad-ministration. Like each stage in the development of Joseph in Genesis, it is always too soon to tell.

Though clearly not a superpower as a colony of England, this country had to struggle with its humility even then. Those who settled on this continent and who saw themselves as “God’s New Israel” planted the seeds of the struggle. Israel as a nation was chosen in biblical times, but clearly it was chosen to serve God’s purposes, both in its di-rect dealing with other nations and as an example of covenant living, demonstrating God’s will and vision for humanity. When Israel began trusting in foreign alliances rather than in “the Lord our Banner,” they edged toward exile. When Israel abandoned their commitment to the poor and the stranger, they edged toward exile. When Israel lost sight of their history as slaves, they ushered in a future of exilic living. Frequently, the oracles of God directed toward wayward Israel began with “I am the Lord the God Who brought thee out of the land of Egypt.” The prophets consistent-ly called Israel, not to some new utopian society but rather back to the covenant established on the heels of the exodus. The prophets were not wild-eyed dreamers with new visions of a better world; rather, from Nathan to Amos, Micah to Jeremiah, Isaiah to Elijah, they called the nation and its lead-ership back to their covenant with the One who had delivered them from bondage.

By the time of the Babylonian exile, much of this prophetic edge had ebbed and eroded. More common then was the “prophet on the payroll,”

who delighted in telling the kings and princes what they wanted to hear rather than what “thus sayeth the Lord.” False prophets predicted victory for the Hebrews when God preordained defeat. False prophets encouraged alliances with neighboring superpowers when God saw clearly the impend-ing doom of such forsaking of the One that the Psalms call a “Strong Tower” and a “Shelter,” the One Samuel honored when he built an altar after a victory over the Philistines and called it “Ebenezer”—“The Lord has helped us.” The political agenda of Israel was now determined by a series of kings and princes, devoid of a critical mass of prophetic activity, who called the nation and its leadership to account. Offering prophecy that didn’t support the status quo and the inter-ests of the mighty resulted in jail time or a cistern’s depths, being smacked and mocked, and being threatened with death. Exile loomed.

The United States as an entity is not alone in its appropriation of “chosen people” identity. Within its borders, African Americans have ad-opted a sense of chosenness as well. In his book Prophesy Deliverance: A Revolutionary Afro-American Christianity, Cornel West calls this sense of chosen-ness the “Black Exceptionalist tradition.” Black Exceptionalism argues that because of the history of slavery and segregation in the United States, the descendants of those who were enslaved have developed a moral superiority from their perspec-tive as outsiders to the mainstream of society. It argues that prohibited from the corrupting pow-ers attributed to political and economic leadership, African Americans have been able to adopt a po-litical culture where moral values such as altruism and virtue can fl ourish, resisting the temptation to operate purely from self- or group-interest. West critiques this notion, arguing that with increased access to power in the 1970s and 1980s, Black lead-ership is plagued by much of the same corrupting infl uences in the political and ethical realms. 3

Still, the adoption of the Israel motif continues in Black America. This motif is especially true in the Black churches’ appropriation of the Exodus narrative as a parallel to their own experience. Just as the Hebrews were slaves under the Egyptians, Blacks were enslaved by Whites in America. Just as God sent Moses to set His people free, God sent


people such as Harriet Tubman and events such as the Civil War to do the same for His enslaved people in the United States. Martin Luther King’s ministry during the Civil Rights Movement often evoked images of Moses setting God’s people free in the segregated South.

Such imagery, however, comes short of de-scribing contemporary reality in America in gen-eral and the Black community in particular. While the history of Blacks in America certainly mirrors that of the Hebrews in Egypt, to wholly identify the Blacks with the Hebrews solely in light of the Exodus narrative reduces the Jewish narrative to one characterized only by victimization and vin-dication. Israel’s struggles to maintain God’s covenant in their public life demonstrates that there is more to a people’s relationship with God than that. Indeed, I have argued elsewhere that African Americans would do well to consider the Babylonian Exile as a more appropriate model of political and economic practice than the Exodus motif. Like the Exodus, the Babylonian Exile re-hearses the reality of victimization and oppression. However, there are acute differences between the social arrangements of the two that commend the latter period as a lens for constructing a contempo-rary Evangelical political identity. Using the move-ment from the Exodus to the Exile allows one to follow these changes: (1) from victimization to complicity in oppression, (2) from a clerical focus to lay ministry and vocations, (3) from liberation to transformation as a goal.

We begin with victimization. The Hebrews were not in Babylon on some sort of vacation. They persisted through diffi cult times in Babylon, expressing their longing for home in the plaintive cries of the Psalmist. Although we do not have the text of their letter to Jeremiah, the prophet’s reply surely refl ects an audience of alienated souls in wonderment over their predicament. The Babylonian-Exile motif allows African Americans to address the reality of injustice as it persists to this day in the United States and abroad, but with-out having that as the primary characteristic of their experience. Racism is a persistent reality, and there must be some paradigm that properly deals with oppression.

At the same time, African Americans have ex-

perienced signifi cant gains in the past fi fty years. The Black middle class, once bound by residential and other forms of institutional segregation, now enjoy greater horizontal and vertical mobility than prior to Brown versus Topeka Board of Education and the ensuing Civil Rights movement. 4 Other Blacks have seen barriers to economic and social advancement removed as they have entered the middle class for the fi rst time. For both of these groups, the presence of the theme of victimiza-

tion is a helpful component both in understanding contemporary injustice and for sustaining a mem-ory of their historically marginalized status. Such memory serves as an important factor in motivat-ing the Black middle-class churches to remember their obligation to the poor. As increasing num-bers of Black churches move to the suburbs and away from the inner city, lack of proximity works against these congregations’ maintaining a dynam-ic witness to the poor. The theme of victimization reminds the Black middle class of the place from whence they have come and, more importantly, the place from whence God has brought them.

The Evangelical Church and its institutions ought to consider a similar shift. The exilic period was a time of humbling for the Jewish people. The United States could use some humility at this criti-cal juncture in history, and the Evangelical Church must model such in its self-understanding, its poli-tics, and its economics. With access to power, the Church loses its critical distance and prophetic

Indeed, I have argued elsewhere that African Americans would do well to consider the Babylonian Exile as a more appropriate model of political and economic practice than the Exodus motif.


voice. Also, like Israel, it will discover that the loss of the prophetic voice will end in judgment. Many White Evangelical churches have their roots in marginalized communities in Europe. Others have experienced the marginalization of their eth-nic traditions within the United States. Still oth-ers experience the marginalization of their voices in the public square. Even the recent invitation to participate in President Bush’s Faith-Based Initiative comes with the qualifying voice that churches must minimize, if not silence, their re-ligious voices with respect to participation in the government-sponsored funding initiative. Indeed, the very thing that churches do best—represent and worship God—becomes the one thing that is taboo in the delivery of services by faith-based or-ganizations.

If the Evangelical Church does not understand its place on the theological margin, the exilic para-digm presents another challenge—that of not be-longing. While Daniel and his friends did advance within the Babylonian political system, there were reminders along the way that they were not part of the historic mainstream of Babylonian culture. From the call to bow before the idols in Daniel 3 to the challenge to Daniel’s prayer life in Daniel 6, there were posts holding signs of “Not Wanted” in the Babylonian Halls of power. In Daniel 5, the feast held by Belshazzar had a clear anti-Hebrew connotation. The Babylonian monarch and his crew dishonored the Hebrews’ God with coarse jesting and mocking. They profaned the cultus through their use of temple vessels as party ware. However, despite the fact that the invitation list in-cluded a veritable Who’s Who of Babylonian soci-ety, Daniel and his three friends did not make the “A” list. Eventually, the mainstream power-bro-kers showed their true self-interest and dismissed the outsiders who had found their way to the pro-cess of decision-making. The Daniel narrative points to the rigidity of the barriers that separate the insiders from the outsiders. God’s vindication of Daniel and his friends in each case indicates that trust in God’s Sovereignty provides vindication for the oppressed where the appearance of acceptance proves false.

In the movement to the exilic paradigm, how-ever, victimization and its vindication do not tell

the entire story. While Egypt is the clear villain in the Exodus, Israel must accept complicity for its existence in Babylon. The Babylonian Empire was evil, but they served as God’s judgment against His own wayward people. Israel had to come to recognize that their sin played a major role in their exile. African Americans, challenged by the gains of post-Civil-Rights America, increasingly see the need for a public voice that engages Black culpability in the current conventions of African- American distressed communities. Some will see this need of a public voice as a new development, though this development is not new. While the public voice of the Civil Rights movement focused on injustice and oppression, there always existed an internal critique within the Black community that insisted on accountability and responsibility within the community itself. Cheryl Sanders, a Christian ethicist and Church of God pastor, calls this criti-cism “Black Moral Self-Criticism.” 5

This tradition is as old as eighteenth-century moralism within the Black Church, yet it was less visible prior to the mainstream culture. A repu-table Evangelical scholar once asked me to identify a nineteenth-century Black Christian who repre-sented a progressive Evangelical personal and so-cial witness. I suggested Henry Highland Garnet, the Presbyterian preacher who was keynote speak-er at the 1843 National Negro Convention and later head of the New York branch of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union. “No,” my colleague responded. “I need somebody that somebody’s heard of.” As a rule, Black moral self-criticism is only “heard of” when it serves those in power to point to someone within the Black community to footnote or champion ideas in the majority’s self-interest. This self-criticism has been less about the truth of such claims than about political expedi-ency.

Evangelicals must look seriously at the extent to which they/we have been part of the problem in considering the development of a social malaise in our time. Does not accountability demand that we own our own excesses and our own failures to be faithful and that we come to a place of true re-pentance? No one would deny the challenge pre-sented by the weakening of authority in contempo-rary America. Evangelicals attribute the erosion


of institutional health to the loss of authority in our leadership. I fi nd myself wondering whether the fi rst chipping away at authority in our society came when “authority” resisted integration and the Evangelical Church was silent. With few ex-ceptions, Evangelicals did not see the pursuit of justice during the Civil Rights Movement as part of their Christian citizenship. As a result, appeals to other institutions, federal courts for example, became the method of engagement. Now, many conservatives lament the “activist” judges who at-tack the authority of our godly heritage—the Ten Commandments, “one nation under God,” etc. The Warren Court brought judicial activism to a new intensity, from which we currently recoil. If we had moved to dismantle segregation as a moral issue before Charles Hamilton Houston, Thurgood Marshall, and the NAACP Legal Defense Fund brought their strategy of litigation to the Supreme Court, judicial activism might never have reached current levels.6

In calling for accountability, I don’t sim-ply mean mass verbal confessions of sin, though that could be a start. Such confessions by the

Southern Baptists and the National Association of Evangelicals certainly have a place. Rather, I envision a willingness of all Evangelical institu-tions, churches, and otherwise to be self-critical in order to assess our accountability for the ills that plague us. In the case of higher education, this

African Americans, challenged by the gains of post-Civil-Rights America, increasingly see the need for a public voice that engages Black culpability in the current conventions of African-American distressed communities.

self-criticism would require colleges, universities, and seminaries to move beyond curriculum reform and ask questions about their ethos and culture in general. One such issue is the growing pre-pro-fessional character of undergraduate education in colleges in general and Christian colleges in par-ticular. By giving increased space in the curricu-lum to pre-professional studies, students have less opportunity to refl ect historically and ethically on such issues as spirituality and vocation. College is increasingly seen as job-preparation rather than as a context for spiritual, intellectual and social growth. The realities and responsibilities of citizenship are given increasingly less attention. Could this lack of attention be a contributing factor to increased cor-ruption in business and government, decreasing dollars available for programs that truly serve the needy, and failure to take responsibility for civic life, a failure that weakens families and communi-ties?

Colleges that require community service rep-resent a step in the right direction. However, such service cannot simply be a trip to “observe” and/or “help out.” Co-curricular activity such as commu-nity service requires Christian ethical, theological, biblical and historical refl ection. Other explana-tions exist for distressed communities besides the poor and any series of accidents of history.

Colleges should cultivate a sense of identity within their students so that the question of who they are in Christ is a live issue in the family, work-place, community, and civic arenas. Resources found in these areas should be directed to the Kingdom-building process. In this case, refl ec-tion on community service should lead graduates to participate in the common good in a manner less self-interested and less group-interested. This participation leads to the second movement in ex-ilic identity—from a clerical focus to a focus on lay ministry and vocation.

In the Exodus motif, there is an extraordinary focus on leadership. Moses received top billing in the narration of the heroic epic of the deliverance of the children of Israel from bondage in Egypt. Aaron, the priest, played a major role in the de-velopment of the cultus, as did the Levites in the stratifi cation of the Hebrew society into priest and people, clergy and lay. Even recent arguments for


the inclusion of Miriam in the leadership pantheon of Israel in the wilderness refl ect the emphasis on leadership in the Exodus paradigm. However, the exile hagiography is rife with persons in the lay ranks who saw their role as using their positions within the general society to bring glory to God and seek the common good. They combined with priests to form a robust blend of persons engaged in seeking the peace of the city where they had been sent by Yahweh, knowing that in its welfare they would fi nd welfare.

Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego all served within the government structures. Daniel’s fi nal appointment seemed somewhat akin to a cabinet post in education. Nehemiah’s ministry re-quired his strategic location within the Babylonian civil-service system in order to mobilize the re-sources necessary to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem and insure the protection and provision of God’s people. Esther’s location within the royal fam-ily enabled her to seek her people’s safety. Esther risked not only her position but also her very life after some prodding by Uncle Mordecai—some-thing about the Sovereignty of God—in order to approach the king: “If I perish, I perish.” These are all lay persons, socialized and supported in such a way that they could maintain their religious identity in government, community, and market-place and could believe that their placement in those venues was neither an accident of history nor their just reward for efforts educational.

Among the priests, Ezekiel preached the mes-sage of personal accountability that seemed foreign to the lips of his ordained counterparts. Avoiding the corruption of the offi cial denominational structure, he seemed well aware of God’s presence and call. Ezra demonstrated broad talents for a priest: historian, scholar, statesman, organizer, al-most something like Antonio Gramsci’s “organic intellectual.” His knowledge of other cultures and foreign affairs made a major contribution to the resettling of Jerusalem and the reclamation of cov-enant identity among the Jews, if only for a season. Also, his willingness to partner with lay persons such as Nehemiah demonstrates a spiritual humil-ity that made for good leadership.

The African-American church must move in a similar direction. The focus on “Black leaders”

refl ects a failure in many circles to think of the em-powerment of persons in government, community, and market as a means of strengthening distressed communities rather than waiting on “the next Moses.” Several African Americans have attempt-ed to wear this crown since the death of Martin Luther King, but none of King’s self-proclaimed successors was obviously anointed for the job. The media cooperates in this folly by continuing to use the term “Black leaders.” Most ethnic groups do not have leaders—they have clergy, politicians, businessmen and women, etc. The constant ref-erence to Black “leadership” objectifi es Blacks as “followers,” homogenizes a diverse pool of talent, and limits their voices and efforts to “race issues.” African-American churches cannot afford to have their voices silent in other areas besides race. The tenures of Condoleezza Rice and Colin Powell in the administration of George W. Bush loom as a prime example of such areas.

Evangelical institutions must press vocational identity as a critical component of preparation for citizenship. With Os Guinness, we limit the term vocation to neither its Protestant distortion (job-re-vocation to neither its Protestant distortion (job-re-vocationlated) nor its Catholic one (clerical). Rather, voca-tion refers to the whole of one’s calling to be in the world before the God whom Guinness calls “the Audience of One.”7 Vocation encompasses family and community life, workplace and church life, educational and civic life, all lived in conscious, intentionally refl ective awareness of one’s rela-tionship with God and response to God’s grace. This awareness led Nehemiah to seek the rebuild-ing of Jerusalem’s walls from his vantage point as a government bureaucrat. It led Messiah College alumna Amy Sherman to place her Ph.D. in eco-nomics from the University of Virginia, as well as her commitment to civic culture, at the disposal of the poor; she documented programs that make a difference in the lives of the disadvantaged.

How this awareness manifests itself in courses within the disciplines should be continuously de-bated. Some argue that there is no such thing as a Christian form of their discipline. Others see Christian perspective as the way in which a vo-cation can be lived through a discipline. To the extent that disciplines degenerate into narrowly defi ned pre-professional programs, colleges will


sirable goal. The work of Nehemiah became a ready model for community development, as the govern-ment bureaucrat’s role in rebuilding the walls of Jerusalem served as a paradigm for such efforts across the country.

As Evangelical churches and their institutions consider their future, the call for social transforma-tion looms large. While some Evangelicals press the claim for an otherworldly ministry given the eminent return of Jesus Christ, other Evangelicals press the claim for a this-world ministry. As we have witnessed, Evangelicals’ role in the re-elec-tion of George W. Bush, and their claiming the moral high ground for legislation and litigation in everything from anti-abortion to the public use of the Ten Commandments, demonstrates that the question is not “Should Evangelicals be politi-cally active in the United States?” but “What form will that activity take?” For me, the tragedy of

Evangelical social action lies in its failure to move beyond group self-interest toward the view of a just society.

Simply put, Evangelical churches, especially within the Reformed tradition that has produced historical fi gures such as John Calvin and Abraham Kuyper and contemporary thinkers in the mold of Nicolas Woltersdorff and Richard Mouw, have a responsibility to view social transformation in ways that transcend the interests of local commu-nities and ethnic groups and that plumb the depths

Vocation encompasses family and community life, workplace and church life, educational and civic life, all lived in conscious, intentionally reflective awareness of one’s relationship with God and response to God’s grace.

need to fi nd different ways of approaching voca-tions—through co-curricular or extra-curricular activities.

There remains, fi nally, the shift from the liber-ation motif of the Exodus to the transformational theme of the Exile. For Moses and the children of Israel, the goal was the Promised Land, with the remains of the Egyptian army squarely in the rearview mirror. This event became the primary emblem of Jewish identity to which Yahweh regu-larly referred when calling the nation of Israel back to Himself. When Jeremiah gives direction to the exiles in Babylon, however, he advises them to un-pack and seek the peace of Babylon. Babylon is to be changed in some way, a way that will ultimately bring glory to the Sovereign Lord and benefi t His people.

The adoption of the Exodus paradigm by African Americans, as we have noted, was a natural parallel in presence. At the same time, there were always those who pointed to the limitations of the paradigm as a means of gaining hope from this bib-lical narrative. This list included the above named Henry Highland Garnet, the African American Presbyterian minister from New York. In his 1843 address to the National Negro Convention, Garnet pointed to defi ciencies he saw in the exodus para-digm, most notably that deliverance or escape from slavery would not bring the freedom for African Americans that it brought for the Hebrews. North America, noted Garnet, whose father had been a fugitive slave hunted throughout New York State, was no real place of rest. Whether one called the Promised Land Canada or the Northern states, de-clared the abolitionist, “Pharaoh’s army is on both sides of the blood-red waters.” 8

The liberation paradigm caught hold in the for-mal theological work of Black theologians such as James Cone and J. DeOtis Roberts in the 1960s and 1970s.9 However, the liberation motif still lacked a Promised Land; the idea that there existed a place of freedom, short of an integrationist vision, found no root in reality.

This lack of a place of freedom necessitated ashift to an ethic of transformation. African-American churches, clear that there was no Promised Land free from the presence of the oppressor, saw the transformation of existing communities as a de-


of the biblical understanding of justice and shalom. This challenge critiques the politics of a country whose founding fathers established a bi-cameral legislative system to create a body—the Senate—whose role would be to see beyond the interests of local communities—the role of the House of Representatives—and strive for the common good of all. In more crass terms, the original philosophy of bi-cameral legislation is violated when the pri-mary question asked of a Senator is, “What did you do for our state?”

To wit, leadership education in the Evangelical Church requires painting social engagement with a much broader stroke while recognizing that any true view of biblical justice will be a perspective from the margin. Any real appropriation of bibli-cal ethics for political and economic change will be a minority report. When the nation and its powers-that-be discover that a person won’t always vote his or her personal or group interest, whether in the polling place or in the shareholders meeting, they will place that person on the margin. When they discover that a person is rejecting his or her crass, least-common-denominator form of politi-cal coalitions, whether conservative or liberal, left or right, democrat or republican, they will close ranks as did Belshazzar in Daniel 5 and move to exclude that person.

Hope still exists, however. Daniel ultimately received an invitation to the very feast designed to celebrate the marginalization of the Hebrew tra-dition. He received an invitation because another Uninvited Guest to Belshazzar’s feast arrived un-announced and began writing on the wall. When this Mystery Guest began writing on the wall, Belshazzar sent for Daniel, who, through his edu-cation and spiritual discernment, was able to give King Belshazzar the interpretation of the writing. Daniel’s subsequent elevation to a cabinet post gave him a platform built by that Same Hand—the Hand of the Sovereign God—from which he fashioned a curriculum for the intelligentsia of Persia. Five hundred years later, representatives of the Persian intellectual community, under the infl uence of Daniel’s curriculum, followed a star to Bethlehem, where they fell down to worship that Same Hand.

It is a violation of our understanding of the

Sovereignty of God to believe that Evangelicals, by adopting a minority opinion, cannot see the vin-dication of God’s truth while standing for justice and shalom in spite of the loss of secular coalitions. The Sovereign God, who raised Jesus from the dead, always has the last word. It is such faith in God’s sovereignty that moved the Black Methodist preacher, Charles Albert Tindley, to write,

Harder yet may be the fi ght.Right may often yield to might.Wickedness a while may reign.Satan’s cause may seem to gain.But there’s a God Who rules aboveWith hand of power and heart of love.And if I’m right He’ll fi ght my battles.I shall have peace someday.10

Endnotes

1. Stephen Carter, God’s Name in Vain: The Right and Wrong of Religion in politics (New York: Basic Books, 2000). See of Religion in politics (New York: Basic Books, 2000). See of Religion in politicsespecially pages 35-47.

2. The essay is found in the collection C. S. Lewis, God on the Dock: Essays on Theolog y and Ethics (Grand Rapids: on the Dock: Essays on Theolog y and Ethics (Grand Rapids: on the Dock: Essays on Theolog y and EthicsEerdmans, 1970).

3. Cornel West, ProphesyDeliverance!: An Afro-American Revolutionary Christianity (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox Press l982, 2002). See especially pages 70-78.

4. The debate on social progress among African Americans centers on comparing the gains and growth of the middle classes with the growth and despair of the contemporary poor. A spike in the debate occurred with the appearance of America in Black and White, by Susan and Stephen Thernstrom (New York: Simon and Schuster, l997).

5. Professor Sanders devotes an entire chapter to this phenomenon in her book Empowerment Ethics for a Liberated People (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1995). Liberated People (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1995). Liberated People

6. Houston’s career and contributions are well documented in Genna Rae McNeil’s Groundwork: Charles Hamilton Houston and the Struggle for Civil Rights(Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania, 1938). One can see the development of Houston’s philosophy of civil rights litigation in McNeil’s chapter “To meet the group needs: the transformation of Howard University School of Law, 1920-1935,” in New Perspectives on Black Educational History, V.P. Frankliin and James D. Anderson, eds. (Boston: G.K. Hall 1978). I attempt


to connect the social context of Houston’s work with contemporary judicial activism in my column, “Just Desserts” in Prism: The America’s Alternative Evangelical Voice 12.4 (July/August 2005), 6. Voice 12.4 (July/August 2005), 6. Voice

7. Os Guiness, The Call: Finding and Fulfi lling the Central Purpose in your Life (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2003). Purpose in your Life (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2003). Purpose in your LifeSee especially pages 27-35.

8. See his pamphlet “An Address to the Slaves in the United States of America,” delivered in 1843 at the National Negro Convention in Buffalo, New York. It has been reprinted in numerous places, often along with David Walker’s “Appeal to Persons of Color” of 1829.

9. James Cone’s most mature, complex statement concerning liberation theology and the Black experience remains his God of the Oppressed, revised and reissued God of the Oppressed, revised and reissued God of the Oppressedin 1997 by Orbis Press. J. DeOtis Roberts, whose A Black Political Theolog y was initially published in 1974, Black Political Theolog y was initially published in 1974, Black Political Theolog ywas another early Black liberation theologian whose work helped set the parameters for how the liberation paradigm would guide the discussion. Both have several pieces recorded in Black Theolog y: A Documentary History, edited by James Cone and Gayraud Wilmore and published in two volumes (1966-79 and 1980-92) by Orbis Press in 1979 and 1993 respectively.

10. From the hymn “I’ll Overcome Some Day,” written by Charles Albert Tindley. See Charles Albert Tindley(library.advanced.org/10854/tindley.html.

Bibliography

Carter, Stephen. God’s Name in Vain: The Right and Wrong in Religion. New York: Basic Books, 2000.

Cone, James. The God of the Oppressed. New York: Orbis The God of the Oppressed. New York: Orbis The God of the OppressedPress, 1997.

Cone, James, and Wilmore Gayraud, eds. Black Theolog y: A Documentary History. New York: Orbis Press, 1979, 1993.

Franklin, V.P., and James D. Anderson, eds. New Perspectives on Black Educational History. Boston: G.K. Hall, 1978.

Garnet, Henry Highland. “An Address to Slaves in the United States of America.” Crossing the Dark Water: Three Hundred Years of African-American Writing. Ed. Three Hundred Years of African-American Writing. Ed. Three Hundred Years of African-American WritingDeidra Mullane. New York: Doubleday, 1993.

Guiness, Os. The Call: Finding and Fulfi lling the Central Purpose in Your Life. Nashville: Thomas Nelson: 20003.

Lewis, C. S. God on the Dock: Essays on Theolog y and Ethics. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1970.

McNeil, Genna Rae. Groundwork: Charles Hamilton Houston and the Struggle for Civil Rights. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania, 1938.

Roberts, J. DeOtis. A Black Political Theolog y, 1974.

Sanders, Sheryl. Empowerment Ethics for a Liberated People. Minneapolis: Fortress, 1995.

Thernstrom, Susan and Stephen. America in Black and White. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1977.

Tindley, Charles Albert. “I’ll Overcome Some Day.” Charles Albert Tindley. Library.advanced.org/0854/tindley.html.

Trulear, Harold Dean. “Just Desserts.” Prism: America’s Alternative Evangelical Voice 12.4 (July/Sugust 2005): 6.

West, Cornel. Prophecy Deliverance!: An African-American Revolutionary Christianity. Louisville: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1982, 2002.


It is usually assumed that John Calvin and the Calvinistic tradition are transformationist. Ernst Troeltsch, for example, says that one of the two tendencies throughout Calvinism is “the active

formation of a society.”1 H. Richard Niebuhr, in his Christ and Culture, states that “the conversionist idea is prominent in [Calvin’s] thought and prac-tice.” His vision includes “the transformation of mankind in all its nature and culture into a king-dom of God in which the laws of the kingdom have been written upon the inward parts.”2 Nicholas Wolterstorff also called early Calvinism a “ formativeWolterstorff also called early Calvinism a “ formativeWolterstorff also called early Calvinism a “religion” or a “world-formative religion.”world-formative religion.”world 3 These are just a few examples of the common belief that Calvin and Calvinism are transformationist.

It therefore comes as a surprise to read in the Calvin Theological Journal the article of David Calvin Theological Journal the article of David Calvin Theological JournalVanDrunen questioning the transformationist vision of Calvin.4 At the heart of the discussion is the place of the kingdom of God in his theol-ogy. VanDrunen argues that for Calvin, the king-dom of God is not found in all of society; rather, the kingdom of God is restricted to the Church. VanDrunen writes, “Calvin adamantly denied that one should expect to fi nd the kingdom of Christ made manifest in the civil kingdom of politics, law, and the like” (249). For him, Calvin holds to a modifi ed version of Luther’s two-kingdom doctrine, and this version constitutes a dualism rejected by contemporary transformationists. For VanDrunen, Calvin’s two-kingdom doctrine leads to a conservative attitude to politics: “Calvin be-lieved that the civil kingdom was to remain the civil kingdom, and he was modest in his hopes of changing it” (264). He also states that Calvin believed that the civil kingdom “was not to be

Calvin the Transformationist and the Kingship of Christ

by Timothy P. Palmer

Dr. Timothy Palmer is Professor of Theology at the Theological College of Northern Nigeria (TCNN), in Bukuru, Nigeria, where he has taught for twenty-two years. Specializing in African Christian Theology, Dr. Palmer has served as Academic Dean, Deputy Provost, and Acting Provost. He also wrote The Reformed and Presbyterian Faith: A View From Nigeria. He currently edits the TCNN Research Bulletin.


transformed into a different kind of kingdom nor conjoined with the spiritual kingdom of Christ” (265). In his conclusion, VanDrunen reveals his cards by suggesting that this dualistic theology of the kingdom of God is also the dualistic theology of Scripture, which Calvin, “the insightful exegete and theologian,” has correctly discovered (266). For VanDrunen, the attitude of transformation-ists toward culture should be informed by the dual-ism of Calvin and Scripture.

This essay argues that although Calvin does teach a residual two-kingdom doctrine, the lord-ship of God and the kingship of Christ are more determinative for Calvin’s theology. The historical transformationism of Calvin and Calvinism is ex-plained largely by Calvin’s theology of the univer-sal rule of God and Jesus Christ.

Luther’s Two-Kingdom DoctrineThe two-kingdom doctrine originated with

Martin Luther, even though there were infl uences from Augustine and others. This doctrine “made a decisive contribution toward unraveling the then hopelessly entangled spiritual and temporal inter-ests.”5 Luther thus posited two kingdoms and two governments, which must be sharply distin-guished. In 1525 he wrote,

God’s kingdom is a kingdom of grace and mercy, not of wrath and punishment. In it there is only forgiveness, consideration for one another, love, service, the doing of good, peace, joy, etc. But the kingdom of the world is a kingdom of wrath and severity….For this reason it has the sword….6

Corresponding with the two kingdoms are two governments:

For God has established two kinds of government among men. The one is spiritual; it has no sword, but it has the word, by means of which men are to become good and righteous, so that with this righ-teousness they may attain eternal life….The other kind is worldly government, which works through the sword….7

Both of these kingdoms and governments be-long to God, and they should be distinguished from a third kingdom, that of Satan. However, God rules the two kingdoms in different ways: Christ is the head of the kingdom of God, ruling by his Word; while the emperor or civil magistrate is the head of the secular kingdom, ruling by the sword. The state or the temporal kingdom is or-dained by God, according to Romans 13.

It has been frequently observed that Luther’s two-kingdom doctrine is dualistic. A dualism is established between the kingdom of God and the kingdom of the world, gospel and law, grace and nature, and the Christian as an individual and in society. Perhaps these distinctions refl ect the complex dimensions of the Christian life, or to use Niebuhr’s words, “Christ and Culture in Paradox.”8

However, the place of Jesus Christ in the king-dom of the world is problematic. Luther writes,

Do you want to know what your duty is as a prince or a judge or a lord or a lady, with people under you? You do not have to ask Christ about your duty. Ask the imperial or the territorial law.9

In other words, while Christ is the king over the kingdom of God, or the church, his sovereign-ty over the state is excluded. A Luther interpreter has said, “Christ does not participate in this secular kingdom. God—and not Christ—institutes it. It is therefore certainly God’s kingdom, but it is not Christ’s kingdom. Christ is concerned only with the spiritual kingdom.”10 Another Luther author-ity said that the Barthian idea of Christ’s royal rule is “neither terminologically nor in any systematic sense...at the heart of Luther’s two-kingdoms doc-trine or of his political ethics.”11 This, I suggest, is a critical difference between Luther and Calvin.

The historical transformationism of Calvin and Calvinism is explained largely by Calvin’s theology of the universal rule of God and Jesus Christ.


Calvin’s Two-Kingdom DoctrineIn its earlier stages Calvin’s theology was

strongly impacted by that of Luther. This impact is clear from the fi rst edition of his Institutes, which Institutes, which Instituteshas the same basic structure as Luther’s Small Catechism.12 Luther’s Small Catechism deals with the Decalogue, Creed, Lord’s Prayer, Sacraments, and practical matters, such as prayer and obedi-ence to authorities. The six chapters of Calvin’s 1536 Institutes are on the Decalogue, Creed, Lord’s Institutes are on the Decalogue, Creed, Lord’s InstitutesPrayer, True Sacraments, False Sacraments, and Christian Freedom and Government. It is in this fi nal chapter that we fi nd the two explicit refer-ences to the two-kingdom doctrine, which in 1559 are put in Books 3 and 4.13

Muller informs us that the placement of a doc-trine does not determine its meaning;14 but the scattered and isolated references to this teaching suggest that for Calvin, it is less decisive than for Luther. Ganoczy, while recognizing the “profound infl uence” of Luther on Calvin, states that the lat-ter did not follow the former on all points. For the young Calvin, what counted “was the absolute sovereignty of the message of the one Lord.”15

It is true, though, that a two-kingdom doctrine is present in Calvin. We fi nd it taught explicitly in two places in the fi nal edition of his magnum opus. In Institutes 3.19.15 Calvin posits “a twofold govern-Institutes 3.19.15 Calvin posits “a twofold govern-Institutesment (regimen)” in a person, one spiritual and the regimen)” in a person, one spiritual and the regimenother political. These two kingdoms may also be called “the ‘spiritual’ and the ‘temporal’ jurisdic-tion (iurisdictiotion (iurisdictiotion ( )”; or “the spiritual kingdom (iurisdictio)”; or “the spiritual kingdom (iurisdictio regnum spirituale)” and “the political kingdom (spirituale)” and “the political kingdom (spirituale regnum politi-cum).” Thus, in a person there are “two worlds, cum).” Thus, in a person there are “two worlds, cumover which different kings and different laws have authority.”16 It is interesting to note that the em-phasis is fi rst of all on governments, or rules, and only secondly on kingdoms.

The second explicit reference is at the begin-ning of Institutes 4.20, where again we read of a two-Institutes 4.20, where again we read of a two-Institutesfold government (regimen), which is later defi ned as regimen), which is later defi ned as regimen“Christ’s spiritual kingdom (regnum) and the civil regnum) and the civil regnumjurisdiction (ordinationem).”ordinationem).”ordinationem 17 We see again that the emphasis is on rule or government; even the word regnum can be translated as rule, or authority, and regnum can be translated as rule, or authority, and regnumnot just realm, or kingdom.

Calvin is here describing two types of govern-

ment in society: church and state, to use contem-porary language. Church government is different from civil government. The church rules through the Word; the state rules through civil laws and the sword. Calvin’s polity here resembles Abraham Kuyper’s sphere sovereignty and the American separation of church and state.

Of course, there is a duality, and even dualistic language, in these passages. However, the two-government, or two-kingdom, theology of Calvin is milder than that of Luther. Calvin does not have Luther’s law-gospel dualism; the contrast between the personal Christian and Christian in society is much less pronounced; and most signifi cantly, Jesus Christ in Calvin’s theology is not excluded from the political realm. Luther’s theology is more dualistic than Calvin’s.

Regnum ChristiWhile the identity of the civil government is

reasonably clear, the identity of the regnum Christiis less immediately evident. Presumably the de-fenders of Calvin’s two-kingdom doctrine will as-sume that the regnum Christi is coterminous with regnum Christi is coterminous with regnum Christithe visible church, since the political kingdom refers to the state. Passages from Institutes 4.2.4 Institutes 4.2.4 Instituteswould seem to support this view: “the church is Christ’s Kingdom, and [Christ] reigns by his Word alone….”18

The phrase regnum Christi is found about forty-regnum Christi is found about forty-regnum Christione times in the 1559 Institutes.19 While twenty-fi ve references are in Book 4, there are sixteen occurrences in the fi rst three books. Since regnumcan mean reign as well as reign as well as reign realm, Battles sometimes realm, Battles sometimes realmtranslates the Latin as “the reign of Christ” (e.g., Inst. 1.9.1). In the Battles translation, the Chiliasts “limited the reign of Christ [regnum Christi] to a regnum Christi] to a regnum Christithousand years.”20

Calvin’s view of the reign of Christ has been discussed in many places,21 but the discussion in Book 2 of the Institutes may serve as a summary. Institutes may serve as a summary. InstitutesAlthough his resurrection is the beginning of his glorifi cation, Christ “truly inaugurated his regnumonly at his ascension into heaven.” It was then that he began “to rule heaven and earth with a more immediate power.”22 The session at the Father’s right hand is directly connected with the ascension. Then, “Christ was invested with lordship [dominio]


them, but that he may hold his sway over the whole world.”25

A fi nal example is taken from Psalm 2. David’s temporal kingdom is a type of the regnum Christi: “the regnum Christi is here described by the spirit regnum Christi is here described by the spirit regnum Christiof prophecy.” The lesson of this psalm is that “all who do not submit themselves to the authority [imperio] of Christ make war against God.” Thus, “as the majesty of God has shone forth in his only begotten Son, so the Father will not be feared and worshiped but in his person.”26

For Calvin, the regnum Christi is a hermeneutical regnum Christi is a hermeneutical regnum Christior exegetical tool for understanding Old Testament prophecies. The regnum Christi is the period of time regnum Christi is the period of time regnum Christibetween the fi rst and second comings of Christ when Christ would reign from heaven by his Word and Spirit, regenerating believers and causing them to obey God. The visible church may be at the center of this obedience; but Christ’s reign is in no way restricted to this institutional church. The au-thority of Christ is too big for that.

Th e Reign of Christ and Civil AuthoritiesIt should then not be surprising to observe

Calvin’s insistence that earthly rulers obey the

Calvin does not have Luther’s law-gospel dualism; the contrast between the personal Christian and Christian in society is much less pronounced; and most significantly, Jesus Christ in Calvin’s theology is not excluded from the political realm. Luther’s theology is more dualistic than Calvin’s.

over heaven and earth, and solemnly entered into possession of the government committed to him . . . until he shall come down on Judgment Day.” The purpose of the session is that “both heavenly and earthly creatures may look with admiration upon his majesty, be ruled by his hand, obey his nod, and submit to his power.”23

One is impressed here by the universal nature of Christ’s reign. Heaven and earth are ruled by Christ; all of creation comes under his dominion. Of course, the church is the center of his kingdom. However, when the church is called the regnum Christi, is the reference to the visible or invisible Christi, is the reference to the visible or invisible Christichurch? Must this universal reign of Christ be restricted to the institutional form of the visible church? Surely Christ’s reign is broader than the visible church. Surely Christ’s reign impacts all of life, especially through the lives of Christians both inside and outside the visible church.

Calvin’s Old Testament commentaries offer a redemptive-historical perspective on the regnum Christi. The psalmists and prophets of old looked Christi. The psalmists and prophets of old looked Christiforward to the age of the Messiah, when Christ would reign in the world. Invariably the fulfi ll-ment of the prophetic expectations would be the regnum Christi. This would be the period of justice regnum Christi. This would be the period of justice regnum Christiand righteousness when believers respond posi-tively to the rule of Christ. Surely the reign and realm of Christ are greater than the visible, insti-tutional Church.

The commentary on Jeremiah 31:31-34 is typi-cal. Calvin says that this passage “necessarily re-fers to the regnum Christi.” This reign of Christ is regnum Christi.” This reign of Christ is regnum Christithen connected with the new covenant and the re-generation of believers by the Holy Spirit: “The coming of Christ would not have been suffi cient, had not regeneration by the Holy Spirit been add-ed. It was, then, in some respects a new thing, that God regenerated the faithful by his Spirit, so that it became not only a doctrine as to the letter, but also effi cacious, which not only strikes the ear, but penetrates into the heart, and really forms us for the obedience to God.”24

The prophecy of Isaiah 2:1-4 likewise refers to the regnum Christi, which began with the fi rst regnum Christi, which began with the fi rst regnum Christicoming of Christ. This prophecy looks forward to the “calling of the Gentiles, because Christ is not sent to the Jews only that he may reign over


rule of Christ. A favorite passage of his is Psalm 2:12: “Kiss the Son, lest he be angry and you be destroyed in your way.”27 Calvin writes, “Since it is the will of God to reign by the hand of his Son…, the proper proof of our obedience and piety to-wards him is reverently to embrace his Son…. The sum is that God is defrauded of his honor if he is not served in Christ.”28 This interpretation is espe-cially relevant to the princes and rulers of Europe in Calvin’s time, as is abundantly clear from his let-ters. Especially prominent is the prefatory letter to King Francis I at the beginning of the Institutes, Institutes, Institutesoriginally written in 1536:

Indeed, this consideration makes a true king: to recognize himself a minister of God in governing his kingdom. Now, that king who in ruling over his realm does not serve God’s glory exercises not kingly rule but brigandage….But our doctrine must tower unvanquished above all the glory and above all the might of the world, for it is not of us, but of the living God and his Christ whom the Father has appointed King to “rule from sea to sea, and from the rivers even to the ends of the earth.”29

The authority of God and his Christ extends over earthly kingdoms. In 1548 Calvin wrote Protector Somerset, the regent under Edward VI:

It would be well were all the nobility and those who administer justice, to submit themselves, in uprightness and all humility, to this great king, Jesus Christ….Thus ought earthly princes to rule, serving Jesus Christ, and taking order that he may have his own sovereign authority over all, both small and great.30

Of course, Calvin was concerned about the thorough reformation of the English church, but his language suggests a wider scope. In a letter to King Edward VI of England, Calvin wrote,

It is therefore an invaluable privilege that God has vouchsafed you, Sire, to be a Christian king, to serve as his lieutenant in ordering and maintaining the kingdom of Jesus Christ in England…[;]you ought to be…setting to your subjects an exam-ple of homage to this great King, to whom your Majesty is not ashamed to submit yourself with all

humility and reverence beneath the spiritual scep-ter of his Gospel….31

If there is a two-kingdom doctrine in Calvin, this doctrine should be taken together with the absolute and universal authority of Jesus Christ over both spheres, or kingdoms. Luther excluded Christ from the temporal kingdom; Calvin put Christ over both kingdoms.

Calvin the TransformationistIt goes without saying that Calvin was a trans-

formationist. The city of Geneva in his day is suf-fi cient evidence. Through his infl uence the city was deeply changed. Whether the transformation was for better or worse is still a matter of debate; that it happened is obvious.

John Knox’s commendation is well known. In 1556 he called Geneva “the most perfect school of Christ that ever was in the earth since the days of the Apostles.” Only here were “manners and reli-gion….so sincerely reformed.”32 Clearly there was transformation.

However, this transformation came at a price—the price of religious freedom. Dissenters who would not conform had to leave or face the consequences. Still, one cannot deny that the city of Geneva was radically transformed.

Calvin’s letters also reveal a desire that Europe be transformed. His letters to the princes and rul-ers express his desire for radical change. At the end of his life, he was sober, however, about the possibility of political change. On July 31, 1562, he said from the pulpit that “justice and judgment is a universal rule which applies to everyone. It means governing oneself so as to treat everyone fairly and properly, and it means standing against and resisting evil whenever it is necessary to relieve poor, affl icted people”; however, the princes of his day were too greedy, believing that “they have total license to gobble up their poor subjects.”33

Calvin was concerned for social justice. This concern does not make him a socialist; but he was a revolutionary, having turned Geneva upside down. Whether he was a “constructive revolutionary”constructive revolutionary”constructive 34 is a separate matter of opinion.

There is, thus, a decisive difference between Luther and Calvin. Luther’s two-kingdom doc-


trine led to a conservative attitude toward engag-ing society; but Calvin’s teaching of the kingship of Christ and sovereignty of God led to a transforma-tionist engagement with society.

Of course, there is a lingering dualism present in Calvin’s theology and language. However, to restrict Christ’s reign to the visible church and not the state is not to read Calvin correctly.

Perhaps we should recognize an unresolved tension between the universal kingship of Christ and the kingdom of Christ as the Church.35

However, to suggest that the nature-grace dualism is the defi ning aspect of Calvin’s theology would be to ignore the vast primary and secondary evi-dence about the centrality of the kingship of God and Christ in his theology.

Calvin was indeed an “insightful exegete and theologian.” Because he was, he discovered the universal kingship of Yahweh that permeates all of Scripture. John Stek tells us that “God’s kingship (-dom) is the Bible’s primary and primary and primary pervasive theme–pervasive theme–pervasivefrom Genesis 1 to Revelation 22.”36 The theology of Calvin refl ects this vital concern.

If there is a two-kingdom doctrine in Calvin, this doctrine should be taken together with the absolute and universal authority of Jesus Christ over both spheres, or kingdoms. Luther excluded Christ from the temporal kingdom; Calvin put Christ over both kingdoms.

Endnotes

1. Ernst Troeltsch, The Social Teaching of the Christian Churches, The Social Teaching of the Christian Churches, The Social Teaching of the Christian Churchestrans. O. Wyon (New York: Harper, 1960) II: 602.

2. H. Richard Niebuhr, Christ and Culture (New York: Christ and Culture (New York: Christ and CultureHarper & Row, 1951), 217-18.

3. Nicholas Wolterstorff, Until Justice and Peace Embrace(Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1983), 10.

4. David VanDrunen, “The Two Kingdoms: A Reassessment of the Transformationist Calvin,” Calvin Theological Journal 40 (Nov. 2005): 248-66. Page Calvin Theological Journal 40 (Nov. 2005): 248-66. Page Calvin Theological Journalreferences to this article are put in our text.

5. Bernhard Lohse, Martin Luther’s Theolog y: Its Historical and Systematic Development, trans. R. Harrisville (Minneapolis: Systematic Development, trans. R. Harrisville (Minneapolis: Systematic DevelopmentFortress, 1999), 319.

6. Martin Luther, “An Open Letter on the Harsh Book against the Peasants,” in Luther’s Worksagainst the Peasants,” in Luther’s Worksagainst the Peasants,” in 46:69-70. Luther’s Works 46:69-70. Luther’s Works

7. Martin Luther, “Whether Soldiers, Too, Can Be Saved,” Luther’s Works 46:99.Luther’s Works 46:99.Luther’s Works

8. Niebuhr, Christ and Culture, 149.

9. Martin Luther, “The Sermon on the Mount,” Luther’s Works 21:110.Works 21:110.Works

10. Paul Althaus, The Ethics of Marin Luther, trans. R. Schultz The Ethics of Marin Luther, trans. R. Schultz The Ethics of Marin Luther(Philadelphia: Fortress, 1972), 46.

11. Lohse, Martin Luther’s Theolog y, 315.

12. See Alexandre Ganoczy, The Young Calvin, trans. D. Foxgrover and W. Provo (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1987), 137.

13. Institutes (1559) 3.19.15 and 4.20.1-2 are found in sections 13 and 35-36 of the 1536 Institutes (cf. Institutes (cf. Institutes Institution of the Christian Religion, trans. F.L. Battles [Atlanta: John Knox, 1975], 252, 284-86).

14. Richard Muller, “The Placement of Predestination in Reformed Theology: Issue or Non-Issue?” Calvin Theological Journal 40 (2005): 204-5.Theological Journal 40 (2005): 204-5.Theological Journal

15. Ganoczy, The Young Calvin, 145.

16. John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, ed. J. T. McNeill, trans. F.L. Battles (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1960), 3.19.15; see for Latin: Calvini Opera Selecta (OS), ed. P. Barth and W. Niesel (Munich: Chr. Kaiser, 1926-1936), 4:294.

17. Institutes (1559) 4.20.1; OS 5:471-72.Institutes (1559) 4.20.1; OS 5:471-72.Institutes

18. Institutes (1559) 4.2.4: OS 5: 36.Institutes (1559) 4.2.4: OS 5: 36.Institutes

19. See Ford Lewis Battles, A Computerized Concordance to “Institutio Christianae Religionis” of 1559 of Ioannes Calvinus(Pittsburgh: Pittsburgh Theological Seminary, 1972; microfi lm).


20. Institutes (1559) 3.25.5; OS 4: 439.

21. See, for example: Thomas Torrance, Kingdom and Church(Edinburgh: Oliver and Boyd, 1956), 90-164; Timothy Palmer, “John Calvin’s View of the Kingdom of God,” (Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Aberdeen, 1988), 162-95.

22. Institutes (1559) 2.16.14; OS 3: 501-502.Institutes (1559) 2.16.14; OS 3: 501-502.Institutes

23. Institutes(1559) 2.16.15; OS 3: 503.

24. Commentary Jer. 31:31-32; Commentary Jer. 31:31-32; Commentary Calvini Opera (CO) 38:686, Calvini Opera (CO) 38:686, Calvini Opera688-89. English translations of the Old Testament commentaries are based on those of the Calvin Translation Society, reprinted by Baker Book House (Grand Rapids, 1979).

25. Commentary Isaiah 2:4; CO 36:59, 64.Commentary Isaiah 2:4; CO 36:59, 64.Commentary

26. Commentary Psalm 2:1-2; CO 31:42-43.

27. Scripture references are taken from the New International Version.

28. Commentary Psalm 2:12; CO 31:50.Commentary Psalm 2:12; CO 31:50.Commentary

29. “Prefatory Address to King Francis I of France” Institutes (1559), 3-4; OS 3: 11-12.Institutes (1559), 3-4; OS 3: 11-12.Institutes

30. “Letter to Protector Somerset,” 22 Oct. 1548 in Letters of John Calvin, ed. J. Bonnet (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1983) 1:188; CO 13:69.

31. “Letter to Edward VI,” 4 July 1552 in Letters of John Calvin, 1:355; CO 13:342.

32. Cited by John McNeill, The History and Character of Calvinism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1954), 178.Calvinism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1954), 178.Calvinism

33. “Sermon on 2 Samuel 8:9-18,” Sermons on 2 Samuel, trans. Sermons on 2 Samuel, trans. Sermons on 2 SamuelD. Kelly (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1992), 418-19; Supplementa Calviniana, vol. 1. Predigten über das 2. Buch Samuelis, ed. H. Rückert (Neukirchen: Neukirchener Samuelis, ed. H. Rückert (Neukirchen: Neukirchener SamuelisVerlag, 1961), 244. See Timothy Palmer, “The Relevance of John Calvin for Nigeria: Political Refl ections on his Sermons on Samuel,” TCNN Research Bulletin 43 (2005): TCNN Research Bulletin 43 (2005): TCNN Research Bulletin24-31.

34. See W. Fred Graham, The Constructive Revolutionary: John Calvin and his Socio-Economic Impact (Atlanta: John Knox, Calvin and his Socio-Economic Impact (Atlanta: John Knox, Calvin and his Socio-Economic Impact1978).

35. Joachim Staedke in “Die Lehre von der Königsherrschaft Christi und den zwei Reichen bei Calvin” in Kerygma und Dogma 18 (1972): 202-14 speaks of the dialectical und Dogma 18 (1972): 202-14 speaks of the dialectical und Dogmarelation between the doctrines of the two kingdoms and the kingship of Christ in Calvin. He warns against absolutizing either one (213).

36. John H. Stek, “‘Covenant’ Overload in Reformed Theology,” Calvin Theological Journal 29 (1994): 41; see J. Calvin Theological Journal 29 (1994): 41; see J. Calvin Theological JournalStek, “What Says the Scripture?” in Portraits of Creation, ed. H. Van Till et al. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1990), 250-58.

Bibliography

Althaus, Paul. The Ethics of Marin Luther.Trans. R. Schultz. Philadelphia: Fortress, 1972.

Barth, P., and W. Niesel, eds. Calvini Opera Selecta (OS). Munich: Chr. Kaiser, 1926-1936.

Battles, Ford Lewis. A Computerized Concordance to “Institutio Christianae Religionis” of 1559 of Ioannes Calvinus. Pittsburgh: Pittsburgh Theological Seminary, 1972. Microfi lm.

Calvin, John. Commentaries. Calvin Translation Society. Reprinted by Baker Book House. Grand Rapids, 1979.

____. “Letter to Edward VI,” 4 July 1552. Letters of John Calvin. 1:355; CO 13:342. Ed. J. Bonnet. Grand Rapids: Baker, 1983.

____. Institutes of the Christian Religion. Ed. J. T. McNeill. Trans. F.L. Battles. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1960.

____. Institution of the Christian Religion (1959). Trans. F.L. Battles. Atlanta: John Knox, 1975.

____. “Prefatory Address to King Francis I of France.” Institutes (1559), 3-4; OS 3: 11-12.Institutes (1559), 3-4; OS 3: 11-12.Institutes

____. Sermons on 2 Samuel. Trans. D. Kelly. Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1992.

Ganoczy, Alexandre. The Young Calvin. Trans. D. Foxgrover and W. Provo. Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1987).

Graham, W. Fred. The Constructive Revolutionary: John Calvin and his Socio-Economic Impact. Atlanta: John Knox, 1978. and his Socio-Economic Impact. Atlanta: John Knox, 1978. and his Socio-Economic Impact

Lohse, Bernard. Martin Luther’s Theolog y: Its Historical and Systematic Development. Trans. R. Harrisville. Minneapolis: Fortress, 1999.

Luther, Martin. “An Open Letter on the Harsh Book against the Peasants.” Luther’s Works 46:69-70.Luther’s Works 46:69-70.Luther’s Works

____. “The Sermon on the Mount,” Luther’s Works21:110.

____. “Whether Soldiers, Too, Can Be Saved,” Luther’s Works 46:99.Works 46:99.Works

McNeill, John. The History and Character of Calvinism. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1954.

Muller, Richard. “The Placement of Predestination in Reformed Theology: Issue or Non-Issue?” Calvin Theological Journal 40 (2005): 204-5.Theological Journal 40 (2005): 204-5.Theological Journal

Niebuhr, H. Richard. Christ and Culture. New York: Harper & Row, 1951.

Palmer, Timothy. “John Calvin’s View of the Kingdom of God.” Ph.D. Dissertation. University of Aberdeen, 1988.


____. “The Relevance of John Calvin for Nigeria: Political Refl ections on his Sermons on Samuel.” TCNN Research Bulletin 43 (2005): 24-31.Research Bulletin 43 (2005): 24-31.Research Bulletin

Rückert, H., ed. Supplementa Calviniana, vol. 1. Predigten über das 2. Buch Samuelis. Neukirchen: Neukirchener Verlag, 1961.

Staedke, Joachim. “Die Lehre von der Königsherrschaft Christi und den zwei Reichen bei Calvin.” Kerygma und Dogma 18 (1972): 202-14.Dogma 18 (1972): 202-14.Dogma

Stek, John H. “‘Covenant’ Overload in Reformed Theology.” Calvin Theological Journal 29 (1994): 41.Calvin Theological Journal 29 (1994): 41.Calvin Theological Journal

____. “What Says the Scripture?” Portraits of Creation. Ed. H. Van Till, et al. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1990.

Torrance, Thomas. Kingdom and Church. Edinburgh: Oliver and Boyd, 1956.

Troeltsch, Ernst. The Social Teaching of the Christian Churches. Trans. O. Wyon. New York: Harper, 1960.

VanDrunen, David. “The Two Kingdoms: A Reassessment of the Transformationist Calvin.” Calvin Theological Journal 40 (Nov. 2005): 248-66. Journal 40 (Nov. 2005): 248-66. Journal

Wolterstorff, Nicholas. Until Justice and Peace Embrace. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1983.


This is the third volume in a series of fi ve but only the second to appear. Between the fi rst volume, by Mark Noll, and this one, by David W. Bebbington, we expect The Expansion of Evangelicalism by John R. Wolffe. Bebbington Expansion of Evangelicalism by John R. Wolffe. Bebbington Expansion of Evangelicalismis a distinguished writer in this fi eld, having placed us all in his debt by his Evangelicalism in Modern Britain: A History from the 1730s to the 1980s (1989). In this earlier work from the 1730s to the 1980s (1989). In this earlier work from the 1730s to the 1980sBebbington offers his infl uential “quadrilateral of priori-ties” characterization of evangelicalism: “conversionism, the belief that lives need to be changed; activism, the expression of the gospel in effort; biblicism, a particular regard for the Bible; and ... crucicentrism, a stress on the sacrifi ce of Christ on the cross.” These certainly capture the heart of the evangelical commitment. Where one or more of these are absent, we are not in the presence of unambiguous evangelicalism.

Bebbington carries this approach into the present vol-ume (23-40). This is an interior history of evangelicalism interior history of evangelicalism interior(evangelicalism in its own terms) rather than a history of evangelicalism wholly situated in its wider cultural context. In addition, Bebbington focuses on two leading evan-gelicals as exemplifying the evangelicalism of their time: Spurgeon and Moody (40-50). While they are an under-standable choice, it is tempting to wonder if these particu-lar exemplars color the picture with a certain hue. Other choices might have produced a signifi cantly different over-all complexion.

A lover of Puritan literature, Spurgeon could retreat into an anti-intellectualism that was to become characteris-tic of later evangelicalism. At the time of the 1887 “Down Grade” controversy concerning liberalism and higher criti-cism, he disparaged “thinking men,” even as he and other evangelicals were unable to formulate a cogent critique of German-style “higher critical” scholarship (172-7). Such righteous bluster could not carry the day among enquiring minds. Thus it was that a deliberate and sometimes strident fundamentalism emerged (260-2, cf. 71-2). By 1900, evan-gelicalism had largely shed whatever it had derived from an older and more austere Calvinism. The counter tendency was limited to the emerging evangelical fundamentalism, fi nding what it needed in the theory of inspiration ad-vanced at Princeton Seminary.

From the eighteenth century and into the nineteenth, Methodism was the only large-scale denominational tradi-tion that was wholly evangelical. It was conspicuous for its

adherence to Wesley’s neo-Arminianism. The nineteenth century saw evangelicals shift away from the sovereignty of God in salvation—“the doctrines of grace” —toward a much looser approach, which seemed to make everything pivot on human volition (135). People must decide for Christ before what is offered through Him can be theirs. Moody stood in this “alter call” and “enquiry room” tra-dition (46). Finney was his predecessor (106), and Billy Graham his successor. This tradition accorded well with Wesleyan evangelicalism and provided us with sub-biblical language such as “Have you received Jesus Christ as your own personal savior?”

The shift from doctrine to feeling certainly refl ected the infl uence of romanticism (150-51), but there was sure-ly more to it. Bebbington might have explored the close relationships between evangelism and marketing. Revivalist evangelism (“reaching the masses”) has been more infl u-ential on marketing and advertising than we realize, while the latter has impacted styles of evangelism more than is generally appreciated. Where there was an ever-increasing range of goods and services, “decision making” became an increasing part of so-called “secular” socio-economic life for ever more people. Evangelicals thought they were being scriptural, as in “Choose you this day whom you will serve” (Joshua 24:15), but they were reading such texts within their cultural context, even while they neglected the their cultural context, even while they neglected the theirstudy of culture as a worldly preoccupation. Evangelicals thought in terms of “common sense” (121-24), which pre-disposed them against any critical analysis of their own ac-tual starting-point. They could be self-deceptively self-as-sured. As a result, even as they mounted crusades (also for human betterment and the combating of social evils [239 f.]), they were being molded by their surrounding culture more than they realized.

In addition to the emergence of fundamentalism, evangelism underwent two major doctrinal developments in this period. The fi rst was the rise of evangelical pre-millennialism, especially in its dispensational form. The Puritans and early evangelicals were often of post-millenni-al orientation. However, as it became clear that the French Revolution was not an isolated incident, evangelicals swung towards an eschatology that was more consistent with the cultural pessimism of post-revolution conservatism. It was Edward Irving (1792-1834) who assiduously promoted the pre-millennial standpoint (191). This standpoint asserted

Book ReviewsBebbington, David W. The Dominance of Evangelicalism: The Age of Spurgeon and Moody. (A History of Evangelicalism: . (A History of Evangelicalism: . (People, Movements and Ideas in the English-Speaking World, vol. III). Downers Grove, Illinois: InterVarsity Press, People, Movements and Ideas in the English-Speaking World, vol. III). Downers Grove, Illinois: InterVarsity Press, People, Movements and Ideas in the English-Speaking World2005. 288 pp. including bibliography. ISBN: 0-8308-2583-5. Reviewed by Keith C. Sewell, Professor of History at Dordt College.


that the Second Advent of Christ would take place before the millennium. By 1900, this viewpoint had become per-vasive, although there were always exceptions (193-96). To this pre-millennialism many added the further refi ne-ment of dispensationalism, as advocated by John N. Darby (1800-82), with its doctrine of the “rapture” (62, 197-98). Dispensationalism asserted a postponement of the king-dom of God. The gentile church became a “mystery pa-renthesis.” There was little or no scope here for Christian action in all spheres of life, to the glory of Almighty God. The triumph of futurist (in their interpretation of the Book of Revelation) dispensationalists was greatly facili-tated by the “Scofi eld Bible” (199). The results “can hardly be overestimated,” says Bebbington (199-200).

The second doctrinal development in evangelism was the emergence of the “holiness movement,” with its em-phasis on the “higher Christian life,” which served as a prelude to the burgeoning of the Pentecostal movement in the early twentieth century and the charismatic move-ment from the 1960s onwards. This second development was entirely consistent with the fi rst. It was a movement towards individual, interior, personal holiness—as if the inner and the private (as in the “quiet time” spent “alone with the Lord”) were to be a sort of refuge from the en-circling pre-millennial gloom. The roots were Wesleyan. The desire was for a personal (read individual) “baptism of individual) “baptism of individualthe Holy Spirit”—a mountaintop experience—beyond the process of sanctifi cation.

The infl uences of perfectionism were certainly behind this quest for the “higher Christian life,” which found its apogee in the Keswick Convention movement that spread around the globe from the 1870s (200-210). However, Keswick never went “the whole hog”—it resisted the ap-parent consequences of its own starting-point. It rejected any notion of the “baptism of the Holy Spirit” that result-ed in immediate perfection, and it declined to seek charis-matic gifts (210-14). Eventually, Keswick was upstaged by the burgeoning Pentecostal movements of the twentieth century. Evangelicals did not retreat from all social action, but by the latter nineteenth century, cultural pessimism and individualism had left their mark. Evangelicals were mainly involved in intense rear-guard actions dictated by moral priorities (239 f.). They aspired to change individual lives and address particular evils. The reformation of structures was not on the agenda.

All of this leaves us wondering about the thesis implied in the title of the book. Was evangelicalism truly dominant between 1860 and 1900? It was certainly pervasive within Protestant denominations (50-51, 253-54), but was it so infl uential as to be prevalent? It was the norm within many branches of the principal Protestant denominations within the Unites States. As of 1900, the big loss of ground was yet to take place in America, but Bebbington tells us that even in America the “evangelical hegemony,…a reality in the middle years of the century, was fading before its end” before its end” before(75, italics mine). The fact that it was fading would suggest

that assertions of “dominance” are misleading.What about the British Isles? In truth, an assertion of

dominance would seem to apply even less to Great Britain than to North America. In England, evangelicals were los-ing ground within their base-church, the Church of England (254). Moreover, its characteristic pragmatism meant that evangelicalism could not resolve the issues between the established Church of England and the Free Churches (64, 66). Within the Church of England, the evangelical party struggled with the mounting infl uence of Anglo-Catholicism (73, 154-58). Notwithstanding the “Second Evangelical Awakening” of 1858-60 (107 f.), evangelicals did not dominate the ecclesiastical culture of the British Isles after 1860 or, still less, the national agenda.

Individual exceptions aside, evangelicalism as a broad movement was prone to depreciate the intellectual. It knew what it did not like, but it was incapable of dominating the intellectual agenda with a mixture of reaction, repu-diation, and denunciation. Initially many evangelical lead-ers accepted Darwin’s theory of evolution and only later became increasingly uncertain (173-83). The response to higher critical biblical scholarship was insecure and tended to become shrill (261). Although Bebbington writes of an “evangelical hegemony,” he has to depict it as “insecure” (257). Such equivocations are so weighty that the broad thesis fails to convince. Evangelicals may well have perme-ated signifi cant ated signifi cant ated portions of the Anglophone world to portions of the Anglophone world to portions somedegree, but by 1900, they did not dominate it. dominate it. dominate

In an earlier work, Bebbington referred to the nine-teenth century as “the Evangelical century,” but he greatly qualifi ed this description, particularly with reference to the period covered in this present volume, by speaking of “decay” from the 1860s onwards (Evangelicalism in Modern “decay” from the 1860s onwards (Evangelicalism in Modern “decay” from the 1860s onwards (Britain, 1989, 149, cf. 141-46). Now, with Mark Noll, Bebbington is a co-general editor of this “A History of Evangelicalism” series. He seems to have shifted his opin-ions to suit the overall outlook of the series. He is one with Noll and George Marsden in supporting evangelicalism while decrying the anti-intellectualism of the earlier twen-tieth century. The language of foreboding (decay, fading, insecurity) is present in The Dominance of Evangelicalism but The Dominance of Evangelicalism but The Dominance of Evangelicalismin a manner rendering it more compatible with the overall orientation of the series as implied in the titles of its indi-vidual volumes.

If we accept the idea that evangelicalism was once per-vasive without being either “dominant” or “hegemonic” and that it undeniably went into decay, it is worth asking why. It may be argued that the “quadrilateral of priorities,” which Bebbington uses to identify evangelicalism, repre-sented such a reduction of the full teaching of scripture and scope of Christian discipleship as to systemically handicap evangelicals in facing the challenges that emerged in the nineteenth century. To confront those challenges with authority and insight would require of evangelicalism that it exceed the limitations of its own character. That did not happen.


In teaching Christian perspectives in the natural sciences, and to some degree in any other discipline, one feels a signifi cant tension. On the one hand, it is tempting to present simplistically and triumphalistically the view that the discipline is wholly founded upon a biblical worldview and only makes sense to Christians. On the other hand, we might elect to leave out theologically refl ective commentary altogether because the requisite nuancing is either too complicated or appears unorthodox. Following either option fails to prepare students for the wider marketplace of ideas they will encounter in graduate school, the workplace, and culture in general. Many books on science and Christianity (or religion generally) have been generated in recent years, but Covenant College biologist Tim Morris and physicist Don Petcher have succeeded in producing “a one-volume source that addresses issues [in science and Christianity] in a way that speaks both to the evangelical mind-set and also to the subtlety of the issues involved without compromising what we hold to be fundamental theological truths” (vii).

Each of the book’s three sections—“Science and Christian Belief in the Postmodern Context,” “Jesus Christ, the Lord of Creation,” and “Investigating His Dominion”—consists of three to fi ve essay chapters, which can be read fruitfully, both on their own and in sequence. Morris and Petcher begin with a review and critique of modernism, which continues to boast a signifi cant following in the public understanding of science. Modernism’s metaphor of distinct trees of scientifi c and theological knowledge comes in a number of varieties: the trees intertwine, or one is dominant, or they are unrelated, or one is to be grafted into the other. Both post-modernism and a Christian worldview have already recognized the failure of this metaphor, since instead of standing on the forest fl oor, everyone is already sitting in the branches. As a result, Morris and Petcher propose to replace this picture of science and religion with a river metaphor. In their view, science is “the fl ow of a complex cultural enterprise that arises from a confl uence of various historical, cultural, and philosophical brooks and streams, each grown out of its own foundational religious commitments” (11). The reality of the world, by God’s grace, provides the constraining infl uence on science that allows common work to be done (just as the landscape constrains the river’s fl ow); and the diverging delta reveals differing perspectives on what is found. This innovative river metaphor can be fruitful in addressing our culture in which “science…is simultaneously revered, feared, and reviled” (7).

This example from early in the book is one of several areas in which the authors not only insightfully identify but also correct modernist habits of mind. In doing so, they

recount the story of three early Christian dissenters of the Enlightenment, namely seventeenth-century scientist-philosopher Blaise Pascal, eighteenth-century Lutheran philosopher Johann Georg Hamann, and nineteenth-century Princeton Presbyterian theologian Charles Hodge and their respective critiques of Descartes, Kant, and Darwin. They then turn to a concise and accessible summary of the contributions of Kuyper and Dooyeweerd to the Christian philosophy of science, showing both their continuity with earlier thinkers and their novelty.

Much written in the area of science and Christianity turns out to be simply theistic, or worse, deistic. Morris and Petcher’s book is an excellent example of the riches to be mined from a fully Trinitarian perspective. They suggest that Calvin’s minimal discussion of the Trinity in creation has tended to de-emphasize God’s immanent and personal presence in the creation. Fully treating both the transcendence and immanence of God is important, and they rightly advance the signifi cant contributions of the prominent twentieth-century, scientifi cally informed, Reformed theologians Thomas Torrance and Colin Gunton, whom I have also found helpful in their Trinitarian approach. This they do by unpacking the activity of Father, Son, and Spirit in creation and providence, especially considered covenantally and in cosmic redemption. Drawing on the work of Reformed theologian Meredith Kline, they show that already in Genesis 1, “the covenant relationship God establishes with His people…fl ows naturally out of His Trinitarian involvement with His creation” (99).

The authors’ desire to challenge deeply-held habits of thought is nowhere more clear than in chapter 5, which is given the creatively chiastic title “Supernatural Laws and Natural Miracles.” Here they trace the history of the concept of natural laws and the shift toward seeing the universe as mechanism. They conclude that instead of “pitting God’s sovereignty against nature’s freedom…[,] God is fully operative, and also creation is fully operative in all that occurs.” (131) However, their struggle against the notion of the ontological status of natural laws is not complete; vestiges of the mechanical world-picture remain in their formulation: “laws of nature God has placed inHis creation” (132) and “God…is above all created laws” created laws” created(128) (emphases mine).

The book is also a signifi cant contribution to the discussion of the motivations and responsibilities of the Christian in science, valuable for students as well as for those deeply into their fi eld. It helps those of us who are investigating God’s dominion to refl ect on how “to love God in all our being, all our knowing, and all our doing in the natural sciences” (156). They give sound advice on issues such as scientifi c and ecclesiastical authority and responsibility. Upon seeing how science fi ts into

Morris, Tim, and Don Petcher. Science & Grace: God’s Reign in the Natural Sciences. Wheaton Illinois: Crossway Books, 2006. 352pp. ISBN 978-1-58134-549-0. Reviewed by Arnold E. Sikkema, Associate Professor of Physics, Trinity Western University, British Columbia, Canada.


the creation-fall-redemption-consummation story, they propose the “glorious scientifi c task in the kingdom [as] a science that has an integrally transforming character as aspects of creation are brought into explicit relation to the Christian scientist himself and thus are connected through him to the transformation of all things that has come and will come in Christ” (186). This is portrayed not simply as an unattainable platitude but with many concrete suggestions and examples that are both challenging and enriching. They show, for example, that Adam’s naming of the animals entails both “the receiving of order as divinely given and the constructing of order as a divinely appointed task” (214); in fact, this way of explaining “order” occurs as a theme in the book, so much so that I had to add pages 216, 224, 241 to the index entry for “order as given”/“order as task.”

The term “grace” is also well and widely used in this book, as in the following contexts. It is God’s grace that the reality of creation constrains and allows for scientifi c theories to agree across worldviews. By God’s grace, we can confi dently strike out into an exploration of our Father’s world without fear. God graciously reveals to us both Himself and the wonders and workings of the world. Even though the authors affi rm “Common grace” as a theme early in the book (in connection with Kuyper), they distance themselves from that terminology near the end because of controversies in Dutch Reformed circles.

This dichotomy in the use of the term “common grace” may be attributed to the book’s dual authorship, which occasionally left me wondering whether this or that chapter was written by Morris or Petcher. In fact, while mostly speaking in the fi rst person plural, the authors speak in the singular in a number of instances. While the preface warns the reader that there will be different styles and some redundancy because of co-authorship, some more careful editing would have avoided such

awkwardness. I do acknowledge the value of their style(s) in that a good number of chapters can be quite fruitfully read independently of the others.

As a physicist concerned with the study of the physical aspect of creation (defi ned in terms of its kernel, interaction), I was disappointed with their use of the word “physical” as denoting something that is “material” or “natural,” as opposed to “spiritual.” While the unpacking of Dooyeweerd’s modal aspects is not in the scope of this book, the insights gained from the philosophy of the cosmonomic idea highlight the reductionism of referring to biotic life and processes as physical, as they do in at least two cases: “the Spirit is not only the giver of spiritual life but also of physical life” (107) and “a physical process, like a plant developing from seed” (198). Furthermore, my interest as a physicist was piqued at several points to see how they might discuss issues such as randomness and uncertainty in quantum mechanics, but only the surface was scratched; perhaps a subsequent book will unpack the implications of their approach, which rightly remained generally applicable rather than discipline-specifi c.

Science and Grace is highly recommended for anyone Science and Grace is highly recommended for anyone Science and Graceteaching or learning science in a Christian context, for Christians working in science, and for those interested in a thoughtful and balanced alternative to perennial controversies. The book is based upon a theologically and philosophically Reformed foundation, thoroughly informed by Scripture, with suitably lengthy quotations and discussion, and well researched. Their treatment of scholarship and vocation will be valuable to those in other fi elds as well. In fact, in many respects I think the book could have been aptly titled Scholarship and Grace, for even outside of the so-called natural sciences, many of its themes apply as the multi-faceted creation is explored to the glory of its Triune Creator.

“There I bid John Calvin good-night.” This, we are told, by his editor Anthony Farindon (1598-1658), was the response of “the ever memorable” John Hales (1584-1656) to the Synod of Dort (1618-1619). Although Hales was not a delegate to the Synod (he was chaplain to the English ambassador in The Hague), the oft-misunderstood quip is in many books partly because generations of historians have found it too good to resist. The wide currency of the quotation can also be attributed to Hales’ Golden Remains(1659, enlarged 1673) being, for many years, one of the few accessible sources on the English and Scottish presence at the Synod.

As the writings of A. W. Harrison (The Beginnings of

Arminianism 1926; Arminianism 1926; Arminianism Arminianism, 1937) exemplify, the Synod did not come to enjoy a high reputation in England. The fact that it did not is partly explained by the massive impact of Wesleyan Methodism in the eighteenth century and the later tendency of Evangelicalism towards a careless, unexamined Arminianism. Even at the time, the Synod was not free from its association with the highly questionable execution of Johan van Oldenbarnevelt (1547-1619), leader of the United Netherlands following the assassination of William of Orange.

Moreover, there was already a tendency within the Church of England to extrapolate the counter-reformational implications of the writings of the “judicious” Richard

Milton, Anthony, ed. The British Delegation to the Synod of Dort. Woodbridge, Suffolk, England / Rochester, The British Delegation to the Synod of Dort. Woodbridge, Suffolk, England / Rochester, The British Delegation to the Synod of DortNY, USA: The Boydell Press and Church of England Record Society, 2005. 411 pp. ISBN: 1-84383-157-0. Reviewed by Keith C. Sewell, Professor of History at Dordt College.


Hooker (1554-1600) in the direction of a more ornate and ritualistic form of worship. As a result, the Synod, driven as it was by the internal doctrinal convulsions of the Hervormde Kerk (Reformed Church) and the political insecurities of the United Provinces of the Netherlands, came at a particularly crucial stage in the history of English Protestant Christianity.

This volume is ably edited by Anthony Milton of the University of Sheffi eld, England. He may be known to some readers for his fascinating study Catholic and Reformed: The Roman and Protestant Churches in English Protestant Thought, 1600-1640 (1995). This new work contains a fascinating 1600-1640 (1995). This new work contains a fascinating 1600-1640range of hard-to-locate or otherwise unavailable documents, mainly correspondence to and from, or relating to, the English and Scottish representatives at the Synod.

The material is ordered and presented in ten parts: (1) the political background to the Synod; (2) the theological background; (3) the preliminaries of the Synod; (4) the prosecution of the Remonstrants, who were opposing the offi cial teachings of the Reformed Church on subjects such as election and grace; (5) divisions among the delegates; (6) the collegiate suffrage [opinion expressed by vote] of the “divines of Great Britaine”; (7) the Canons of Dort; (8) after the Canons; (9) aftermath; and (10) later defense of the British delegation. Each of these ten parts receives its “Introduction” by the editor, who guides the reader with fi nesse through the mass of interacting issues that were the origins, course, and consequences of the Synod.

The monarch of the day was James I of England, dubbed by one wit as “the wisest fool in Christendom,” who was also James VI of Scotland—the formal unifi cation of England and Scotland as “Great Britain” only came in 1707. James appointed the English delegates to the Synod: George Carleton (1559-1628, Bishop of Llandaff), Joseph Hall (1574-1657), John Davenant (1576-1641), and Samuel Ward (1577-1643). Part way through the proceedings, Joseph Hall, suffering from ill health, was replaced by Thomas Goad (1576-1638). James also eventually sent his chaplain, the Scotsman Walter Balcanquall (1586-1645). After Balcanquall’s arrival, it becomes more appropriate to refer to a “British” delegation to the Synod (184).

Many noteworthy points emerge from the documents. Oldenbarnevelt was more sympathetic to the counter-Remonstrants than is generally appreciated (6). The English Archbishop Abbot (1562-1633), a man of reformed doctrinal opinions, thought that the Dutch church needed an Episcopal polity (8-10). We learn of the English scruples towards the Belgic Confession (337) and are reminded of Pierre du Moulin’s (1568-1658) ambitious project of a single transnational protestant confession based on the Thirty-Nine Articles of the Church of England and the Heidelberg Catechism (197-8). (Pierre du Moulin had his irenic side. His reputation for combativeness should not be assessed apart from the circumstances of his life). For many, the centerpiece among the documents will be the original 1619 translation into English of “The Canons of the Synod of

Dort” (297 f.).As I considered these documents, a number of matters

came to mind that simply cannot be dismissed when one refl ects on the predicament of reformed Christianity in the early seventeenth century. Firstly, the Reformed churches of Europe were for the most part dependent on, and subject to, their respective “godly princes” (xxii ff.). As it turned out, James was satisfi ed with the outcome of the Synod (364). Also, it is worth remembering that scholasticism, with its orientation towards logical symmetry, had become the habitual mode of technical doctrinal statement amongst the reformed by this time. Those of us who acquired our philosophy from neo-Calvinists have learned to critically probe the epistemological and ontological assumptions of this style of discourse. In truth, however, the Synod was rightly saying that our deliverance comes to us entirely by the grace of God, freely provided in Jesus Christ. We should not forget this as we critically assess the scholasticism of the Synod itself. It is important not to throw out the doctrinal baby with the scholastic bathwater.

Furthermore, there was some “wiggle room” amongst those who rejected the Remonstrant position. For example, John Davenant had his own thoughts on the extent of the atonement. “There is no Confession of any Reformed Church,” he declared, “that doth restrain Christ’s death only to the Elect…” (220). There has been a long-standing English tendency to resist the logical angularity of the Canons of Dort—a tendency expressed also in the soteriology of Richard Baxter (1615-91) and J.C. Ryle (1816-1900).

If the Remonstrants had expected a conference, what they got was a trial and condemnation. They soon triumphed, however, at the expense of Reformed Christianity. “Calvinism” in the minds of many became reduced to, and equated with, the contested “fi ve points.” With that notion fi rmly lodged in the minds of many today, it is hardly surprising that it is an up-hill battle to convince folk that authentic Calvinism exhibits an all-encompassing world-view.

After 1619, the British delegates suffered a multi-phased eclipse in reputation. Their theological position soon became passé in the Church of England (382 ff.). When parliament and Puritans challenged the crown and episcopacy in 1640, they suffered by their association with Anglicanism. Thirdly, their “Calvinism” was unacceptable because it was associated with Puritanism and rebellion at the restoration of the English monarchy in 1660. So it was that Hales’ earlier criticisms, mentioned above, found ready ears in a changed context (xix).

This work provides documents and commentary for academic specialists. It is not a popular introduction, but it is a valuable contribution to the literature, and it is essential reading for those investigating the composition of the canons and their reception in subsequent generations. It is pleasing to record that this volume, dedicated to “the people of the Netherlands, [is] still kind and hospitable to visiting British scholars four hundred years later.”

Dordt College is a Christian liberal arts college in Sioux Center, Iowa, which believes that the Bible is the infallible and inspired Word of God and which bases the education it provides upon the Bible as it is explained in the Reformed creeds. Hence, the college confesses that our world from creation to consummation belongs to God, that Jesus Christ is the only way of salvation, and that true comfort and reliable strength can be had only from his Holy Spirit.

Dordt College was established in 1955 and owes its continuing existence to a community of believers that is committed to supporting Christian schools from kindergarten through college. Believing in the Creator demands obedience to his principles Creator demands obedience to his principles Creatorin all of life: certainly in education but also in everything from art to zoology.

The Dordt College community believes in the Word of God. God’s revelation in Word of God. God’s revelation in Wordword and deed finds its root in Jesus Christ, who is both Savior from our sin and Lord over the heavens and the earth. The Bible reveals the way of salvation in Christ Jesus and requires faithful thanksgiving to him as the Lord of life, especially when exploring, coming to understand, and unfolding the diversity of creation.

Dordt College, in its many departments and programs, celebrates that diversity and challenges students not merely to confess Christ with their mouth but to serve him with their lives. Empowered by the strength of his Spirit, Dordt College stands ready to meet the challenge of providing and developing serviceable insight for the people of God.

SubmissionsWe invite letters to the editor and articles, of between 2,500 and 8,000 words,

double-spaced, using MLA or Chicago Style Manual documentation. Subjects should be Chicago Style Manual documentation. Subjects should be Chicago Style Manualapproached from a Reformed Christian perspective and should treat issues, related to education, in the areas of theology, history, literature, the arts, the sciences, the social sciences, technology, and media. Please include a cover letter with your e-mail address and a self-addressed, stamped envelope. Send your submission to the following:

Pro Rege c/o Dr. Mary Dengler, Editor Dordt College 498 4th Ave. NE Sioux Center, Iowa 51250

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